Even When the Memories Fade
by a.lakewood
Summary: S1 AU. WINCEST. Dean's gone missing and John arrives in Stanford at Sam's door in the middle of the night. Sam joins his father on the road, but they do more hunting than looking for Dean. Then Sam ends up on his own. Meanwhile, Dean tries to figure out what's wrong with him as he starts forgetting some of the most important things. Can Sam find Dean before it's too late?
1. Teaser

**Title:** Even When the Memories Fade  
**Author:** alakewood  
**Rating:** NC-17  
**Pairings/Characters:** Sam/Dean, John Winchester, Bobby Singer, Jim Murphy, Ellen Harvelle, Jo Harvelle, Missouri Moseley, Ash, Azazel, Jess, a few OCs.  
**Warnings:** AU. Light Sam/Jess. Canonical deaths.  
**Summary:** Dean's the one gone missing and it's John that arrives on Sam's doorstep in the middle of the night. Sam joins his father on the road, but they're doing more hunting than looking for Dean - then Sam ends up on his own. Meanwhile, Dean's trying to figure out what's wrong with him as he starts forgetting some of the most important things. Can Sam find Dean before it's too late, before whatever has altered Dean's mind becomes irreversible?  
**A/N:** Written for the 2012 SPN/J2 Big Bang on LJ.

**TEASER**

He wakes before dawn, pale light from the full moon filtering through his chintzy, second-hand curtains to paint his small room in silver-blue and shadows. He's not certain, but he doesn't think he wakes like this often, on his own without help from the ancient clock-radio on the uneven nightstand to the left of his bed. A twist of the switch on the lamp behind the alarm clock fills the room with soft yellow light that he knows should seem warm, but it doesn't manage to chase away the chill that tingles up his spine, raising the fine hairs on the back of his neck. It's not a pleasant feeling.

The sudden uneasiness in his stomach increases tenfold when his gaze falls upon the wall across from his bed, the dozens of hand-drawn portraits taped to the faux-wood paneling. Some of the sketches are vaguely familiar, others aren't. The lone unfinished drawing off to the side draws his attention enough to pull him out of bed. There's a dark mop of hair, part of a nose, and a vague suggestion of a jawline that looks like it's been drawn, erased, and redrawn many times. But underneath the fall of dark hair and above the slight slope of the bridge of the nose are the most familiar set of eyes he can ever remember seeing.

Something in his gut tells him that's not exactly true – he's never actually seen those eyes outside of the jumbled confines of his dreams. Dreams that are hazy and unclear at best which fade within the first few moments of waking, unlike the frequent nightmares he can never seem to shake – horrible, detailed memories that linger in his mind like fog does over the fields before the sun rises to burn it away.

He shakes his head and pushes out of the room, moving down the short hallway to the tiny closet of a bathroom where he flips the light on and stares at his own face in the mirror. Beside his reflection is a yellow sticky note with his name printed on it in black marker. His face and his name are the only two things that he really recognizes – he doesn't _know_ them, but they're familiar, the same as those haunting eyes and a few of the faces drawn on curling pages of paper taped to his bedroom wall.

The note is a reminder to not forget, to keep that little bit of recognition present. He reads the note, speaks his name aloud. "Dean Winchester. My name is Dean Winchester."


	2. Part One

**PART ONE - SAM**

Sam is asleep and drooling over the notes he's taking for his Civil Procedures class when the phone in the kitchen starts ringing. As he sits up, the corner of the notebook page sticks to his cheek, soggy with spit, he hears Jessica's muffled grumbling down the hall. She still manages to reach the phone before he wakes up enough to stand on his half-numb legs.

"'lo?" she asks sleepily, stifling a yawn with the back of her hand before rubbing her eyes. There's a pause as whoever's on the other end of the line speaks and Jessica glances at Sam, then at the clock above the counter next to the refrigerator. "It's two-thirty in the morning. Who is this?" Her eyes widen as her gaze darts back to Sam. "Yeah, okay." She holds out the phone, hopelessly tangled cord making it impossible for her to bring the receiver to him. "It's your dad."

Sam ignores the uncomfortable jolts of almost-pain as he stands, muscles tingling with the pins-and-needles sensation from a lack of circulation, and crosses the room into the kitchen. There's only one reason his father would be calling this late or _ever_, and it's not good. Sam takes the receiver and settles the age-stained plastic against his ear, gaze focused on the peeling linoleum next to the baseboard beside the fridge. "Is he...?" but Sam can't even ask the words.

"I don't know, Sammy," John Winchester says, voice rough. "He should have met up with me for a job three days ago – was supposed to call when he finished the job he was working down in New Orleans and that was a week ago. I wouldn't be calling you if it wasn't important and I don't expect you to want to help me after the things I said to you the last time we saw each other. But this is Dean."

Sam averts his stare from Jessica's confused and concerned face. "What do you need me to do?"

"Can you – I don't want to ask you to do something you can't do, Sam."

"Dad," Sam says, exasperated. "It's _Dean._"

"Can you get to New Orleans? See if you can get a bead on him, where he might've gone? I'm in the middle of a case right now and-"

"When?" Sam rubs a hand down the side of his face and tries not to think about how easy he finds it to walk away from Jess and this perfectly normal life he's built for himself with just the mention of Dean's name. But this is the life _Dean_ wanted for him, not the one he wanted for himself, after all. Still, he should feel guilty for so readily volunteering to go.

"As soon as you can. I'll see when the earliest flight is out and I'll call you back. I'll pay for everything."

"Okay."

"And Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks."

Sam hangs up without another word and moves into the bedroom, avoiding Jessica's anxious gaze.

"Sam?" she starts, sitting on the edge of the mattress beside the old duffel Sam's pulled out from the back of their closet. "Where are you going?"

"My, uh– My brother is kind of missing and my dad wants me to go check on him. See if I can find him, you know? I'm sure he's fine, just drops off the radar sometimes, and he-"

"Sam, stop. This is the same brother you haven't seen or heard from since your father kicked you out."

"I know. But he's still my brother." Sam watches Jessica shake her head, face falling, as he shoves a couple days' worth of clothes into the bag. He pulls the zipper closed and moves to stand between Jessica's knees. "Look, Jess. I don't expect you to understand, but I have to go. I'll be back before my interview."

"I just..." Jessica sighs as she looks up at Sam. "I don't know. You're such a good person, Sam. You deserve better than how they treated you."

Sam's not exactly sure how to respond to that but, thankfully, he doesn't have to; the phone rings again, effectively interrupting the conversation. He drops a kiss to Jessica's forehead before going to answer the phone. "Hello?" he answers after the third ring.

"I booked you on a three-forty-five direct to New Orleans from SFO. You can pick up the ticket at the American Airlines desk."

"I have to be back by Wednesday afternoon."

There's a moment of staticky silence before John finally answers. "Okay. When you get to New Orleans, you're looking for a man named Tobias DesLandes." He continues on to give Sam the directions, which Sam scrawls on the magnetic pad of paper on the fridge. "Call me with your flight info when you come back and I'll pick you up. You can tell me then what you find."

"All right."

They hang up without saying goodbye and Sam turns to find Jessica standing behind him, holding his bag. "So," she sighs wearily, tension around her eyes, "where am I taking you?"

"SFO."

The drive to the airport takes a little over half an hour, the highway traffic blessedly light. Jessica doesn't say a word until she pulls up into the drop-off zone in front of the main entrance. "Be careful."

"I will," Sam promises, leaning across the center console to press a chaste kiss to Jessica's lips. He briefly thinks about the engagement ring he was looking at last week and how maybe when he gets back, after he makes sure Dean's okay, he'll man up and buy it. Maybe.

Jessica reaches for his hand and holds it tight. "I love you."

Sam holds her gaze in the weak light of the overhead dome and repeats the words back. They feel like a lie.

Jessica pulls away from the curb before Sam reaches the automatic door and Sam has to wonder if she felt it, too.

Sam manages to nap for the most of the four-plus hours he's in the air; even after four years of being in one place, it's still easier for him to fall asleep while he's in motion. There are hundreds of things that were ingrained into Sam as a kid and quite a few that he seriously doubts he'll ever outgrow. His small stash of well-maintained weapons hidden beneath a loose floorboard under the bed are a testament to that just as much as how easily he can fall asleep in a moving vehicle. And how willingly he is to jump back into a life he'd promised he was done with when it's Dean that's in trouble.

Sam dreams briefly of his last night with Dean, wakes with an almost-forgotten heat low in his belly as the plane starts to descend. He doesn't even try to will away the afterimages like he usually would – Jessica's clear blue gaze is nowhere around to make him feel guilty. He stays in his seat by the window until the plane is mostly empty, watching the sky to the east slowly brighten, mentally planning his day and what he's going to say to his brother when he finally tracks Dean down. It's been over a week since he was last seen, so he could theoretically be _anywhere_ in the country by now.

Grabbing his only bag from the overhead compartment, Sam follows the last of the stragglers off the plane and looks for signs posted that will lead him to the car rental counter. Within fifteen minutes, he finds himself squeezing in behind the wheel of a Ford Focus so compact that it makes him feel like he's driving a sardine can with wheels. It nearly smells like one, too.

He adjusts the seat until it's all the way back, so his knees are more or less straight, and low enough that he only has to duck slightly to not hit his head. Sam keeps the windows up, air conditioning running to keep the humidity and the swamp-smell at bay. It's barely been two months since the hurricane tore through and devastated the area and the place still looks like a disaster zone.

The directions he'd scrawled down lead him north over Lake Pontchartrain, a half-hour long drive over open, murky water littered with debris. Back on solid land, he finds himself crossing into Tangipahoa Parish. He tries the word out on his tongue as he takes a left on highway 22, following the directions to Tobias DesLandes' home. At one time, the house was probably a modest one-story settled high atop a brick foundation, but now the windows are patched up with plywood and a couple bright blue tarps span part of the roof. Just another of the many casualties of Katrina.

The man that greets Sam outside looks only a couple years older than John, a graying, scraggly beard covering most of his chin and jaw except for where a shiny, pink scar curves down from his left cheek and across his throat. Sam climbs from the car, grateful to stretch his legs, and shakes the weathered hand Tobias offers. "Sam Winchester."

"Tobias DesLandes. I'm sure your daddy filled you in on the situation." He gestures towards the house and heads in that direction, prompting Sam to follow.

"He told me he sent Dean down here to take care of a rugaru problem?" Sam says, climbing the newly built stairs and following Tobias through the screen door.

"Yeah, and your brother burnt down nearly half the parish in the process." Tobias stops in the large front room, stooping down to retrieve a familiar faded, army-green duffel from beside a stained and fraying plaid couch. "He left this behind. That, too," he says, gesturing at the news clippings and hand-written notes taped over a map of the area, specific places marked with red X's.

Sam takes the hint and starts removing Dean's info map from the wall. "Did he mention where he was going?"

"No. But, if I'm completely honest with ya, kid, I'm not sure _he_ knew where he was going."

Sam stops what he's doing to look at Tobias. "What do you mean by that?"

"I mean, your brother was acting like not all his pistons were firin'. Like he wasn't all there, you know?" He points to his head.

Sam turns back to his task and carefully folds all the news clippings into the map before shoving it into Dean's duffel. "Did he say anything about where he'd _been_?"

"Wasn't really much for chit-chat. He asked me a few questions and that was the end of it. After he tracked down those rugarus and set 'em afire, he was gone. Only time I been grateful for this hurricane mess, otherwise we'd've lost the whole parish. All gonna have to be rebuilt anyway, but still. Your brother wasn't nearly so _neat_ as I'd been expecting."

"I'm really sorry about that, Mr. DesLandes." He shoulders Dean's bag and meets Tobias' steady gaze. "Do you need anything else? While I'm here, I mean."

"No. I think I got all the help I needed from your brother. I'll give your daddy a call if something does come up."

Sam starts for the door before stopping and turning back towards Tobias. "Any idea at _all_ where he might've been headed?"

"Hurricane knocked loose lots of nasty things. You could probably find a hunt anywhere you'd point at on a Louisiana state map. Good luck trackin' him down," Tobias says dismissively.

"Thanks," Sam nods and pushes through the crooked screen door. He tosses Dean's bag ahead of him through the door as he climbs into the car, offering Tobias a half-assed salute as he backs up and does a quick three-point turn to head back for the main road.

Sam can't help but feel like this whole trip is pointless – Dean's already in the wind and Sam doesn't have a chance of finding him if he doesn't have the slightest clue as to where Dean could be headed next. The only thing that might prove to be helpful is Dean's duffel.

When Sam finally comes across a gas station that's open for service, he pulls into a space near the front doors and heads inside in search of an economy-sized cup of coffee and something for breakfast that looks halfway recognizable. He takes his large coffee and a surprisingly fresh-looking breakfast burrito to the front counter, waiting in a short line until the cashier glances up at him tiredly. "That all?" she asks, pushing a limp braid away from her dark eyes.

"Uh, yeah," Sam says, reaching for his wallet. He wants to ask about local motels, but nearly every building he's passed since he left the airport has had boarded-up windows – Sam doesn't really feel like taking his chances out here when he doesn't have much more than his knowledge to protect himself. He can hear the argument now, his dad or Dean berating him for not coming into this prepared, for not even having the basics of rock salt and holy water on hand. He'd been in a hurry – the more time that was wasted, the more distance Dean would be able to put between himself and New Orleans.

Back in the car, Sam unwraps his burrito halfway and rejoins traffic, driving aimlessly as he eats his breakfast in silence and debates whether he should head back towards the airport or go north. A detour on 22 over the Tangipahoa River makes the decision for him, sending Sam back the way he came. Halfway back to Madisonville, he pulls off the highway into a rutted gravel drive and pulls Dean's bag onto his lap.

There's not much in the duffel: a couple of shirts (one short-sleeved, the other a button-down) tattered and bloodstained on the left side, half a roll of gauze marred with bloody fingerprints, the info and map from the wall at Tobias' that Sam had put in there himself, a lone sock, and a couple of crumpled receipts. No, that's not it – something with a little weight is in the zippered pocket inside. Sam recognizes the shape with his fingers before he even gets the zipper undone; it's Dean's old pocketknife. Sam doesn't think he's seen it since he was twelve, had thought it had gotten left behind at Bobby's when his dad returned from that job with another hunter two days late and angrier than Sam could ever remember seeing him. They'd packed up quickly and left, not leaving much more than a note of thanks to Bobby who'd had his own hunt to take care of.

Sam stashes the knife in the front pocket of his hoodie and returns everything to the duffel except the receipts. He smooths them out over the steering wheel and doesn't find anything telling. There's a Wal-Mart receipt for accelerant and a pack of gum; another from a gas station for thirteen gallons of unleaded, a package of Twinkies, and a forty of Bud; the third is a yellow customer copy from a diner with Dean's order of a bacon cheeseburger and fries written in loopy, girlish print, phone number in the same hand on the back. Written beneath that, though, in Dean's all-caps print is the reminder: _CALL DAD TUESDAY._

And that's odd for two reasons: Dean was already done and gone by Tuesday, according to Tobias, and the receipt is from Thursday.

Sam's getting the impression that there's something not right going on with his brother.

He calls his dad as he waits to pull back onto the highway and is met with voicemail after the first ring. "Uh, hey, dad. It's me. I'm at a dead-end here, no idea where Dean's gone or where he's been. Tobias said he seemed...off. There's not really much else I can do here, so I'll call you back later with my flight info." Flipping his phone shut, Sam stamps down on the gas pedal with the toe of his sneaker as an old blue pickup weighed down with a heavy load of plywood bungee-corded into the bed passes, and merges into the sparse traffic on the highway.

It's late when Sam's plane lands in San Francisco – the earliest flight back included layovers in Chicago and Denver – but Sam's honestly too tired to complain. The knot that's been forming since he'd first arrived in New Orleans is slowly cinching tighter the more he thinks about Dean. It's strange that he's looking forward to seeing his dad and discussing the possibilities of Dean's whereabouts more than he is about returning home to Jess. The guilt he feels about not loving her enough has become a little easier to ignore in light of his brother's disappearance.

For the first time in what could possibly be ever, John Winchester is on time, if not early, standing outside the airport entrance waiting for Sam. "How was the flight?" he asks, sidling up to Sam's side and offering a hand in lieu of an actual greeting.

"Fine, I guess. Long." Sam takes a moment to look at his father, notes how much he's aged in the past few years, the evidence in the graying hair at his temples. There's a dark purple bruise spanning his whole left brow along with a few long gashes across that same cheek that look more superficial than anything, no doubt souvenirs from whatever hunt he just finished.

John leads him out into the parking lot. "So, what did you find out?"

"I probably don't know much more than you do. I asked DesLandes if he had any idea where Dean might've gone – if he'd mentioned anything – but he said no. That Dean could've found a hunt pretty much _anywhere_ down there. But, without at least a direction, it would've been impossible to track him down."

Nodding slowly, John stops at an older GMC Sierra pickup, fishing the keys out of the pocket of his jeans. "Yeah, that's the same info I've got."

Sam opens his door when his father unlocks it and climbs into the cab, settling his bag on the floor between his feet. "There are a couple of things, though. The first being that DesLandes seemed to think that Dean was acting strange. Like- what did he say?... 'Not all his pistons were firing.' And the other thing, which kind of supports that, is this receipt I found in Dean's bag. His bag which he left at DesLandes'." He pulls the diner receipt from his jacket pocket, unfolds it, and hands it over. "He's reminding himself to call you two days late _and_ he was already done with the job by then."

The expression on John's face is familiar from the crease between his brows to the set of his jaw. He rereads Dean's hand-written reminder and flips it over for the date, month and day, printed in that same girly hand as the numbers on the back. "It doesn't make sense."

"I know. Do you have any idea where he was before? If something maybe happened to him on his last hunt? Like if he had a concussion or something?"

John hands the receipt back to Sam and shakes his head. "I don't know. He checks in every now and then or I'll call him with a lead, but we went our separate ways after you left." He starts the truck and backs out of the space, easily maneuvering through the light, late-night traffic in the city.

They make easy conversation on the way to Palo Alto, Sam fully accepting his father's apology. When they finally pull up in front of Sam's apartment complex, he reaches for his bag but doesn't move to get out. "Call me when you find him or if he calls you."

"I will." He's staring out the windshield when Sam looks up at him.

"And it wouldn't be so bad if you wanted to call and check in on me."

John does look over at that, an odd, fond expression on his face that Sam doesn't recognize. "Yeah? I think I can do that. And, Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm glad you're happy."

While that's not really a hundred percent true, Sam doesn't say otherwise, just offers a smile, tracing his thumbnail along the edge of Dean's pocketknife through the worn denim of his jeans. "Thanks, Dad." He pushes open his door and climbs out, snapping off a farewell salute as he backs away.

The knot in Sam's belly tenses as he enters his building and heads for the stairs, a sudden flare of anxiety forcing him to take them two at a time. He laughs shakily at himself when he unlocks his door and finds a small plate of cookies with a note from Jess on the table, soft sound of the shower running in the background. Venturing further into the apartment, Sam drops his bag just inside their bedroom doorway and falls onto his back on the mattress. It's nice to be back, he tells himself. It'll be nice to sleep in his own bed, next to Jess, instead of driving all over Hell looking for someone who doesn't want to be found. But he doesn't really mean that.

Sam sighs and opens sleep-heavy eyes he doesn't remember closing and blinks confusedly at the sight of Jessica pinned, bleeding, to the ceiling. His father's hoarse calls don't register at first, barely cutting through the fog in his mind as he watches Jessica's pale mouth form the words _help me._ Between one stuttering heartbeat and the next, the ceiling and Jess are exploding into flames and Sam's being pulled away from the inferno by strong, rough hands. It's a nightmare – it's a nightmare come true – and the realization sends a terrifying chill down Sam's spine. It's enough to make him stop fighting his father.

Sam remembers it clearly now, that strange dream he'd had sometime before school finished, after his birthday, as the semester was coming to an end. It happened just the one time, but it was so vivid, and he woke with the vague memory of Jess and fire, heart racing with a fear he couldn't place. He knows why, now, and his father confirms it. "Was it the demon?" Sam asks, watching as firefighters battle the blaze across the street.

"I think so. There were omens, but I don't know- Jesus Christ, Sam. I'm so sorry."

So am I, Sam wants to say. This is somehow all his fault. He brought this on Jessica, just being who he is. He should've known better than to think he could escape the life, even if he never really wanted to at all.

**PART ONE - DEAN**

Dean follows the directions he's written on the post-it notes that cling to the dashboard despite the thin layer of dust and dirt that's settled over the car's interior during the past few months. All he knows is that he has to keep moving because if he stops for too long, he could get lost. And, right now, getting lost could pretty much equal death. So he naps in the car when he's too tired to keep driving, just pulls over at the first rest stop or gas station or overgrown dirt drive he comes across and writes himself a note on the steering wheel as a reminder of which direction he's going. It's a terrifying feeling, the uncertainty of where he is and what he's doing. He knows he should call his dad, should let him know what's happening, but that would involve explaining everything, what's _wrong_, and Dean can't _remember._

But there's someone else he can trust with whatever's happening to him, someone he can trust to keep this all a secret. Bobby Singer was as much a fixture in his childhood as his father and he treated Dean like the family he knew the older man didn't have. Dean still affectionately thinks of him as Uncle Bobby all these years later as he speeds towards South Dakota and clings to the hope that the hunter he's worked with more in the last year than he has with his father in the past three can help him.

Because this is getting out of hand.

It's a strange, unsettling feeling to have – that moment of staring at his reflection in a smudged window at a gas station or in the gleaming black paint of the Impala and not recognizing the man he sees before the familiarity of his eyes, the slope of his nose, the angle of his jaw, and the fullness of his lips become a whole instead of just parts and it dawns on him, _oh, that's __**me.**_

Those moments have been increasing in frequency since the beginning of May but, thankfully, they only happen during those first hazy moments after he's woken up. They're scary enough without happening randomly in the middle of the day. He knows there's something really wrong – he wouldn't be going to Bobby if he didn't believe that – and momentarily forgetting who he is kind of brings the point home.

If not for the big, wrought iron sign arching over the driveway entrance, Dean's sure he'd have driven right past the gravel lane. As soon as he coasts onto the property, something like relief washes over him. The emotion doubles when an older man clad in denim and flannel steps out onto the snow-covered porch, bill of his baseball cap tipped down to shade his eyes from the glare of the sun.

Dean parks the Impala in front of the house alongside a Chevelle that's badly in need of a paint job. He pulls the keys from the ignition and grabs his dead cell phone from the passenger seat, pocketing both when he climbs out of the car. "Bobby?" He hates the tremor of uncertainty in his voice.

"Yeah. Why don't you grab your bags and come inside."

"Okay." He'd nearly forgotten about his bags and it's yet another reminder of exactly why he's here. Once he's got his duffels in hand, he follows Bobby into the house, knocking the snow off his boots on the rug inside the door as he feels more tension drain away.

"So," Bobby begins, taking Dean's bags to leave them by the staircase before heading down the hall. "Where've you been?"

Dean enters the kitchen behind Bobby and takes a seat at the table. "New Orleans," he answers after a moment of thought.

"Was a rugaru, right?"

"I think so, yeah." The details are hazy. He vaguely remembers the stink and humidity. And fire. Always, somewhere at the back of his mind, is fire.

Bobby pours them each a cup of coffee from the pot on the counter, sets a chipped blue mug in front of Dean then sits across from him. "Where were you before that?"

That information is long gone from Dean's mind, but he knows he can still give an answer. Leaning to the side, he digs his wallet from his back pocket and flips open the worn folds of leather. There are a few sticky notes stuck to the ID window inside: the top one has Bobby's name, number, and address. Below that are the ones with the info about his last hunts, in order. He peels them off and sticks them to the table. _New Orleans, rugaru, DesLandes, 10/29_, all the way back to _Savanna, IL, poltergeist, Hansen, 8/25._ It was August when Dean began supplementing his usual journal entries with post-its he could find without really looking for them. And the journalizing started way back when he was fifteen or sixteen, he thinks, because – if he's completely honest with himself – the memory troubles started then, along with the nightmares.

Bobby eyes the small platoon of post-its. "So, your... _forgetfulness_ started in August?"

Shaking his head, Dean sighs and turns his coffee mug around. "No. That's when I started needing the reminders."

With a huff, Bobby squints at Dean. "Well, how long has this been going on, boy?"

"I don't know," Dean laughs shakily. "Not really. Years?"

"Christ. And you never told your daddy?"

"No."

"Sam?"

"Sam?" Dean repeats, brows furrowed, like he's trying to place the name.

"Your brother, Dean," Bobby elaborates, staring at Dean for a long moment as he waits for the confused expression on Dean's face to clear. But it doesn't. "You don't- you don't remember."

What little relief Dean had felt is gone now at the realization that he's not only managed to forget a _whole person_ for who knows how long, but his _brother._ That's so much more than just a name or what he hunted on his last job, wherever that might've been. It seems to be even more than that fleeting moment when he forgets even _himself._ It's _somebody._ His brother. _Sam._ He meets Bobby's wide-eyed gaze with his own. "There's something really wrong with me, isn't there?" He's thought it plenty of times before, but this is the first time he's admitted it aloud.

Bobby wipes a hand over his brow, nudging up his cap to scratch at his thinning hair. "Whatever it is, we'll figure it out."

"You think- Do you think I can be fixed?"

"I'll do what I can to find out what's going on."

Dean hears the doubt behind the words and nods. "Thanks, Bobby. Really."

"You sure you don't want to call your daddy? Get his help on this?"

"Yeah, I'm sure. I've disappointed him enough."

"Dean."

Dean just finishes off his coffee and gathers up his post-its. The clock ticking away on the wall in the quiet kitchen says it's barely four in the afternoon, but Dean can't remember the last time he caught more than an hour or two of sleep in the car's front seat and he's suddenly overcome with a heavy, bone-deep weariness. "Is it okay if I turn in?"

"Of course," Bobby says. "You've been driving for hours. Want me to wake you for dinner?"

"No, but thanks. I think I'll just sleep right on through."

There's a heavy silence as Dean stands and moves to rinse out his mug. "Second room on the left," Bobby says. "That's the room you and Sam have always shared."

Dean nods and excuses himself from the kitchen. He picks up his bags from the bottom of the staircase and hauls them upstairs, easily finding the room he and Sam – God, _Sam,_ how could he forget he has a brother? – shared as kids. There's a squat, dust-covered, dark-wood dresser against the left wall next to a matching desk, but Dean leaves his bags by the door instead. Unpacking doesn't require much work, just digging his toothbrush out of an inside pocket of the duffel that holds his last few articles of clean clothes and the two journals he keeps tucked at the bottom.

After brushing his teeth and returning to the room to shuck his socks and jeans, Dean settles at the edge of the mattress, his daily journal perched on his knees. He opens the notebook to the first blank page and writes the date, _November 1, 2005,_ and where he's at, _Sioux Falls, SD – Bobby Singer's house,_ and taps the tip of his pen against the paper, thinking about what he should write. Usually, he gets right into it, describes his day and whatever he's done, the hunt or the drive. But not tonight. He's got bigger, more important information tonight. Sam. And it makes him hesitate.

If he writes about his brother, he's going to obsess over the fact and hate himself for forgetting, for _failing to remember._ To have to reread those words again and again...

But if he leaves Sam out entirely- If Dean never gets his memory back – if he stays like this forever – nothing will have changed. Maybe they'll all be better off. It's for the best, he tells himself.

Besides, he and Sam can't be all that close because Sam would've contacted him at some point, right? And Dean would've made note of it and he would remember, but he didn't and he doesn't. So, as he writes about his day, he doesn't mention Sam.

When Dean wakes the following morning, it's to the sputtering cough of a dying engine outside. He's startled to find himself in a narrow bed with soft, clean sheets. The room around him isn't recognizable either, save for his bags inside the doorway. Also familiar is the sight of the pale yellow post-it on the bedside table: _I'm at Bobby Singer's house,_ it says. The words don't mean much before Dean can remember himself, then parts of yesterday filter back into his mind all fuzzy around the edges like they're memories from a decade ago instead of just a day.

After pulling on a hoodie he knows wasn't originally his by the length of the sleeves, Dean feels himself relax a little and heads out into the hall. It takes a couple tries nudging open a few doors that stand ajar before he finds the bathroom. He takes a leak and brushes his teeth, then steels himself for the day ahead. What little hope he has for figuring out this whole memory-loss thing and fixing it relies entirely on Bobby's massive library and stockpile of information. If the answer isn't somewhere downstairs, it's not likely anywhere and Dean will be fated with a life he'll never remember.

Dean shoves his bare feet into the boots he left by the front door before he turned in last night and grabs his coat from a hook on the wall. There's a stronger bite to the clear morning air than Dean is expecting and it makes his breath catch in his chest. He breathes more shallowly as he makes his way around to the back of the house and across the yard to the large metal shed surrounded by a couple dozen near-skeletal car frames.

Bobby is bent over the engine of an older model car that might be a classic if only it had seen better days. The clicking of a ratcheting wrench is followed by a hollow thud and some low cursing as Bobby stands up straight and wipes his hands off on a rag hanging over the grill. He glances over his shoulder as Dean shuffles into the garage. "Morning. How you feeling?"

"Fine. A little fuzzy."

Bobby shoves the wrench and rag into the pocket of his grease-stained coveralls and closes the hood before turning towards Dean and leaning back against the car. "Fuzzy?"

Dean shrugs. It's a feeling he's used to, he guesses. "Fuzzy," he repeats, scratching at the back of his neck as he laughs ruefully, "hazy. Like I'm forgetting something."

"Uh huh." Bobby gestures towards the house. "Well, I think I'm done out here for now. We can head on in and start trying to figure this thing out."

"All right." The trek back up to the house is short, but Dean's nose is already pinking and running from the cold. It's blessedly warm when he enters the kitchen through the back door, stomping snow off his boots on the stairs. There's still some coffee warming in the pot and Dean busies himself pouring a mug while waiting for Bobby. He'd start a fresh pot, but it's not something he's done frequently enough to retain the step-by-step process. Much of the Impala's maintenance has suffered the same fate, it pains Dean to admit, except for how to fill her up with gas.

When Bobby finally comes in some ten or fifteen minutes later, Dean's pacing in the room that's become Bobby's library, hoping the cure to his curse (or _whatever_ the hell this is) is somewhere in one of these many, many books. Bobby pauses in the doorway and points at one of the bookshelves. "Start there, third shelf."

Dean pauses and pivots. "How do I know what I'm looking for?"

"Anything that pertains to memory, that's what we want for now. We'll narrow it down later."

Nodding, Dean crosses the room and grabs a few books from the shelf with his free hand, then situates himself in a chair by the window. Even though the heavy curtains block the brightness from outside, they don't quite meet the wall, the cold seeping through the gaps to send a chill down Dean's spine. He suddenly wishes he were somewhere warmer, like California. He thinks he'd like it there, somewhere along the coast.

Bobby returns shortly after Dean's settled and sets himself up at the cluttered desk, adding a new stack of books to the piles that have already taken up residence there.

The whole day is spent buried in books and dust, Bobby doing most of the work because Dean's forgotten how to read anything but English and Latin – and his Latin's never been that great. When dinner time rolls around, they give the research a rest and settle at the table in the kitchen for a quick, easy meal of beef stew and rice, Dean cleaning his bowl after his second helping with a piece of bread. He's full, content, and ready for sleep.

"Anything you read stick out?" Bobby asks as he gathers their dishes and moves over to the sink.

Dean leans back in his chair and shakes his head. "No, not really. I think I'll start going through my journals tomorrow."

"Journals?"

"Yeah. There are a couple in my bag – one's all about my dreams, the other's about daily stuff. I'm not sure how far back they go, though."

Bobby turns on the water and starts to fill the sink. "What's the dream journal for?" he asks with a glance over his shoulder. "You been having nightmares?"

Pushing his chair back as he stands, Dean shrugs. "Yeah. They've been getting worse. Why?"

"Maybe this memory thing isn't supernatural. Have you seen a doctor about any of this?"

Dean shakes his head again. "I don't think so. But I'll know for sure when I go through my journals."

"Maybe we should make you an appointment anyway." He turns off the water and picks up a sponge frothy with dish soap. "I'll make some calls tomorrow, all right?"

"Yeah," Dean nods, hands on the back of his chair before he pushes it back up to the table. "Thanks, Bobby. For everything."

"You're welcome, kid."

Dean nods again and heads upstairs to his room, the only one other than the bathroom with an open door. The dream journal is on his nightstand next to the lamp and he picks it up as he sits on the edge of the mattress. Most of the dreams detailed in its pages are horrible nightmares filled with death, blood and gore, fire and so much pain. A few, however, are regular old dreams – weapons training, sparring, riding in the Impala, always somebody else there with him but he can never make out a face. But there's a content, happy feeling he associates with the presence. There are _other_ dreams, too. Dreams much rarer than the infrequent good ones which are sometimes his only salvation in sleep compared to the near-nightly occurrence of the hellish nightmares. In these rare dreams, he's with someone whom he only catches fleeting glimpses of – never enough to build up an image in his mind of the face his heart aches to see. The features fade out if he focuses on them too closely, like the light of a star when it's stared at directly.

They're always the same. They start with the tentative touch of hands and a warm, pliant mouth against his own that silently pleads for more until Dean gives in and parts his lips to a questing tongue, those large hands clutching him close. It turns desperate and frantic with need and something like love – he feels so much love for this man he fears he'll burst with it – before their movements slow, become reverent, gentle. This is about more than just sex, so much more; it's an emotional connection manifest physical. And after, when the bittersweet moments of holding each other are colored with despair and sadness, they cling to each other as a kind of finality settles in over them.

Dean knows that's why the dream repeats, why nothing ever changes. It's a one-time thing that can never happen again and it seizes up his heart in his chest to think he'll never know a love like that, that he'll never feel the same happiness outside of his dreams. Sometimes, he thinks he's better off not remembering anything because all he feels is hollow pain.

He swaps out the dream journal for the daily journal beneath it and removes the pen from the spiral binding before flipping to a clean page. On the first line he writes:

_November 2, 2005 – Sioux Falls, SD – Bobby Singer's house.  
We started research today – I probably skimmed through at least sixty books. My Latin is getting worse, if that's possible.  
I told Bobby about the nightmares and he thinks there might be a connection between them and my memory loss like whatever is wrong with me isn't because of a job or __**the**__ job. He's going to call and make me an appointment to see a doctor. I hope he didn't mean a shrink because there's no way I'm talking to one of those hacks. I'd probably be committed on sight just for talking about the nightmares. God knows they're fucked up enough.  
I'm going to start going through my old journals tomorrow to see if there's anything helpful there. I want to figure out what's wrong with me before I __**forget**__ there's something wrong._

There's a strange tingle creeping up the back of Dean's neck as he sets the notebook aside and stands to shut off the overhead light before climbing back into bed, praying for a dreamless sleep.

He's not so lucky.

Dean finds himself in the midst of a nightmare – one of the bad ones that he keeps having, but there's something different about it. Something _real._

The shower is running, low white noise in this apartment that's become increasingly familiar over the summer. He's tired, weary, and trudges through the living room, swiping a cookie from the table as he makes his way back to the bedroom. The atmosphere changes when he crosses the threshold, like the air is charged, making his hair stand on end. It's an easy enough feeling to dismiss, so he collapses onto the bed and waits for the shower to shut off.

Dean watches the scene unfold with detached horror, knowing what comes next. He feels everything the man in his dream feels – the warm blood that drips from the wound across the stomach of the blonde girl pinned to the ceiling. Her mouth moves in a silent, desperate plea before she's engulfed in flames that roil across the ceiling like waves on a stormy sea. The man reaches for her even though he knows it's a futile attempt – she can't be rescued. Then he's pulled away from the quickly spreading fire by an older man with haunted eyes.

Then Dean's waking to darkness, phantom smell of smoke in his nose and the heat of fire along his fevered skin, and Bobby's slightly raised gruff voice. "Look, Rufus- I can't. I'm in the middle- I'm in the middle of something... Yes, it's important... What about Elkins?... Jim Murphy?... Rufus-"

Dean pushes back his blankets and climbs out of bed, forgoing recording this latest recurrence of his nightmare in favor pulling his abandoned hoodie over his head and starting downstairs.

Bobby's just hanging up the phone when Dean enters the kitchen, his tired face pale and drawn in the dim yellow light of the overhead. He glances up, scrubs his palm over his thinning hair with a soft rasp. "Dean."

"What's going on?"

"Nothing."

"If you've got a job-"

"I don't."

"I'll be fine on my own for a couple of days. It sounded like somebody needed your help."

Bobby makes a face. "Just Rufus."

"Well, it sounded important."

"This is important, too, whatever this is that's going on with you."

"I know, Bobby. Believe me, I know. But I'm not going anywhere. I can keep on going through books, go back through my journals, see if I can find something." He shrugs. "A couple of days won't make much difference." Even as he says it, Dean thinks of the most vivid nightmare he's had yet and can't help but feel something bad is going to happen if it hasn't already.

A couple of days makes _all_ the difference. Bobby returns home three days later than expected, banged up and worn out, and is greeted with the business end of his favorite Remington shotgun in his face the moment he steps through the door. Dean's eyes are wide in his pale face as he cocks the gun and levels at the man he suspects of being an intruder.

Bobby raises his hands slowly but doesn't otherwise move. "Dean?"

Dean blinks, vague recognition of his name and that's all. "Who are you and what are you doing here?"

"I'm Bobby Singer. This is my house. You came to me for help." He takes a small step forward. "What do you remember, Dean?"

Dean lowers the weapon, hands shaking, as his eyes dart around the entryway before settling on Bobby once more. "Nothing."


	3. Part Two

**PART TWO - SAM**

They don't hang around long in Palo Alto after the fire. Sam makes his rounds as the grieving boyfriend, talks to Jessica's parents and the police, their shocked and teary-eyed friends. But there's really no consolation. Sam drifts through the whole ordeal while his father keeps busy restocking supplies and breaking into the taped-off ruins of Sam's apartment for damp clothes that stink of smoke. The soot-stained picture frames and Sam's journal from the bedside table are tossed into the bundle carelessly, as an afterthought. There's not much to salvage, either of belongings or friendships, and Sam is eager to follow his father's orders once again – to have direction and a purpose – when it's finally time to go a couple of days later.

Sam doesn't ask, but John supplies the information as they climb into his truck and head East. "A few campers went missing in Colorado. Rangers seem to think it was a bear attack, but I don't think that's the case." He details the history of the area, how there's a pattern with the disappearances, and that the bodies are never recovered. Sam nods at all the right parts, but his mind is still stuck some three-hundred miles back, buried in a pale pink steel casket six feet beneath freshly turned dirt. He knows he should tell his father about the dream, about the nightmares he'd had as a kid that only Dean could calm him from and which eventually went away about the time Dean started having his own.

After nearly ten hours on the road, they finally pull off Route 50 in eastern Nevada at the small town of Ely. John bypasses all the modern, brightly lit hotels and finds the most decrepit-looking motel, complete with sagging roof and flickering neon sign, on the outskirts of town. There's a truck stop quarter of a mile further down the road that Sam points out. "I'm gonna go see what they've got for food. You want anything? Coffee?"

John nods, grabbing his bag from the narrow space behind his seat. "Coffee sounds good."

"I'll be back in a few." He shoves his hands into the pockets of his jacket as he makes his way across the lot towards the street, holding tightly to his phone as he glances left and right, and quickly crosses the empty highway. The gravel of the shoulder crunches under his shoes and for the first time in days he feels like he can finally breathe again. There's a thin layer of snow on the ground and stinging chill to the air that promises more, but for now the frigid air is calming and helps to clear his head.

The truck stop is nearly empty, just one semi pulled up to refuel at the diesel pumps, the driver inside at the counter with a large styrofoam cup and what looks to be some kind of Danish wrapped in a napkin. Sam nods at the tired-looking woman at the register and turns down an aisle filled with candy bars and snack mixes. The Hostess display at the end of the aisle makes him think of Dean and he suddenly realizes – cover of his cell slick against his sweating palm – he's just accepted his father's word, hasn't tried calling Dean himself. He shakes his head, slightly disgusted with himself for not even thinking to _try_ calling.

Dean's number is still set as his number two speed-dial – at least, the last number Sam ever had for his brother is. He flips his phone open and holds down the button, waits for it to dial automatically. The line rings and rings, and he feels his hope ratcheting higher with each passing second until the automated message interrupts. "The voicemail box for the cellular customer you are trying to reach is full. Please try your call again." Sam hangs up and shoves the phone back into his pocket. At least it's still ringing through, meaning the phone isn't dead or off, and that means Dean's still out there somewhere. Or that somebody else came across his phone. Or a hundred other scenarios that Sam's overactive imagination is suddenly spinning.

But, no. Dean's still out there. Sam knows it. He _feels_ it.

He grabs a pack of Twinkies from the rack, a bag of Chex Mix, and an Almond Joy for his dad, and heads over to the wall where there's a cappuccino and hot chocolate machine and a couple of pots of coffee. He pulls two styrofoam cups off the stack and fills one with cappuccino for himself, dropping in a couple of ice cubes from the fountain pop dispenser to cool it down, and snugs a lid onto it before filling the other with coffee for his dad. It takes some creative finagling to get everything over to the counter without dropping anything, but he manages. He pays for his haul and asks for a bag, tentatively sips at his cup as he heads back outside.

John's at the small table underneath the window by the door when Sam gets back to the room, journal and some loose pages spread out before him. He gratefully accepts the cup of coffee with a thanks and takes a healthy swig after testing the temperature on his lip. He offers a smile when Sam drops the candy bar on top of his notes.

"So. Any idea what we're gonna be up against?" Sam asks, sitting on the foot of the far bed.

"Not yet," John answers, "but I've got some leads."

They start out early in the morning just as a fresh snow starts to fall, tiny flakes that sparkle in the pink-orange glow of the sodium lights that ring the truck stop parking lot. John fills the truck's tank up with gas as Sam goes in for more coffee and day-old doughnuts. The sound of the heater running full blast and the low drone of a static-filled classic rock station keep the silence in the cab comfortable as they eat. Sam finds he doesn't really have much to say anyway.

Halfway across the state of Utah, they stop for a bathroom break and Sam finds his teeth aching from the processed-sugar sweetness of another package of Twinkies. He washes the spongy, creme-filled concoction down with half a bottle of Dr. Pepper, wincing at the aftertaste and wondering, not for the first time, how the hell Dean could be so fond of the junk. He catches his dad's gaze out of the corner of his eye as he's balling up the cellophane, and Sam wonders if he's thinking the same thing.

As they cross the state line into Colorado, John turns the radio down, but still has to compete with the noise of the heater when he speaks. "I'm gonna drop you off in Blackwater to get a start on the case while I run over to Manning."

"What for?" Sam asks, noting his father's hesitation.

John shakes his head, muscle in his jaw twitching beneath the stubbled skin as he clenches his teeth together. It's all too familiar. "An old... friend of mine lives there," he finally says. "Might have something to help us against the demon."

Sam nods and keeps his mouth closed, not voicing the questions that come to mind because at least his father's given him _something._ And, while he understands finding the demon is important, it's not nearly as important as finding _Dean._ Right now, it kind of feels like his brother's disappearance has been pushed to the back burner, the demon and this job in Colorado their current priorities. Sam can keep himself from asking questions about this thing that some old _friend_ of his dad's may or may not have that concerns the demon, but he can't not ask after his brother. "What about Dean?"

John's clenching his jaw so tightly Sam's sure he could hear his teeth creaking from the strain if the fans in the heater weren't so loud. "I know, Sammy. I've got someone looking into that."

Again, Sam lets it go, having learned after many years of butting heads with his dad how to pick his battles. He knows they're no closer to finding Dean than they were before Sam went down to Louisiana; he hates that there's literally nothing he can do about it, there's no way to find Dean or figure out where he's been.

It's early afternoon when John drops Sam off at the visitor's center across from a motel in the small town of Blackwater Ridge. It's only a few degrees warmer here than it had been in Ely, the air holding the promise of snow but none yet dusting the ground. Sam just hopes that whatever it is that they're looking for, they'll find it before the mountain weather sets in and they're forced to hunt in the freezing cold woods in a snowstorm.

Sam checks them into the lone motel and crosses the street to the visitor's center. There's a local area map on the wall, faded and creased, a pin where the town is, and Sam sees the little pine tree symbol where the Lost Creek Trail Ranger Station is located a few miles into the woods along a dirt access road. He figures that's his best bet in finding any information about the missing campers and the similar disappearances in the past. But the ranger he meets in the small log structure takes one look at him and narrows his eyes. "I'll tell you what I told the Collins girl – people lose cell signals up in these woods all the time. There's no reason to think her brother's missing just because she didn't get a goodnight call."

Sam's taken slightly aback at the ranger's acerbic tone. He moves forward half a step to read the name stitched into the fabric above the pocket of the man's shirt. "Look, Mr. Wilkinson-"

"_Ranger_ Wilkinson," he corrects.

"_Ranger_ Wilkinson," Sam amends. "I know that, and I'm sure, on some level, she knows that, too." It's obvious he's going to get nowhere with this ranger, but at least now he's got a name – or, half a name.

He makes the trek down the access road and goes back to the motel, digging the local phone book out of the drawer in the nightstand between the beds. To his luck, there's only one Collins listed and he notes the address before flipping to the front of the worn phone book to find the town map.

It's not far, just a few blocks, but Sam knows he's too late to convince the girl to stay back when he sees her, a younger boy, and an older man dressed in drab colors loading into a truck. He's not sure what he would've said anyway to get her to trust him – making up stories on the fly was always Dean's forte and Sam always felt bad about lying to the people they were trying to help. And, especially now, when he has no idea what they were facing out in the woods, he couldn't even try to tell her the truth.

Sam calls his dad as he starts heading back towards the ranger station, hoping Ranger Wilkinson will at least give him the location of the supposedly missing campers' camp site. The line rings and rings and goes to voicemail. He curses the automated message that precedes the beep. "Hey, Dad, it's me. The sister of one of the campers left with a guide this morning to go find her brother. What do you want me to do?" He can't very well go after them because he's on foot and who knows how far up into the woods they're going. "Call me back when you get this."

Ranger Wilkinson isn't any more helpful the second time Sam sees him but he begrudgingly gives up the most probable location for the camp. Sam takes a chance and asks if this kind of thing has ever happened before. "What, exactly, kind of _thing_ are you talking about?" Ranger Wilkinson asks. "Campers going missing? Yeah, it happens from time to time. Kids with no training go out there and get off-trail, get lost."

"How often do they not come back?"

Ranger Wilkinson eyes him warily again. "It happens," he concedes. "If the elements or starvation don't get to them first, sometimes the bears do."

"So, if you know what risks there are to these missing campers, why not send somebody out after them?"

"Because we don't know for sure that they're even _missing._ We're understaffed as it is, and if there's no certainty they're in danger, there's no reason to mobilize volunteers."

Sam nods, understanding even if he doesn't agree. It's up to him and his dad on this one.

When John arrives later that afternoon as the daylight starts to wane, pale yellow and watery as the sun starts to sink towards the jagged line of the horizon, Sam's got a half dozen sheets of paper in his lap that he'd printed off at the tiny public library. He'd managed to do some research into the previous disappearances and discovered a pattern – every twenty-three years – and gets a clap on the shoulder from his father. John rifles through one of his duffels until he produces his journal – the story sounds familiar. There's a furious flipping of pages for a couple moments, then he's setting the thick, bound book on top of the printouts in Sam's lap. "The location, the missing campers, the cycle." He taps his finger on the page, the grotesque sketch of an emaciated, humanoid creature with claws.

"A wendigo?" Sam asks disbelievingly. "This far west?"

"It's our best bet."

Sam's wishing he'd had more time to research when he finds himself alone in the woods, the terrified voice of a girl calling for help drawing him and his father deeper into the thick trees and effectively separating them when Sam manages to pull ahead. "Dad?" he calls out. There's no answer, but the thorned bushes behind him rustle and shake before whatever's there darts off, a trail of flapping branches left in its wake. Whatever it is is _fast_ and not at all small. He thinks back to his dad's journal entry, the description of the wendigo. He needs to figure out where the thing's lair is at.

He finds it by accident when he's chasing after what he's not certain is his father's voice – the ground beneath him gives away mid-stride, collapsing out from under him in a crash of dirt and overgrowth and shale – and he's _underground_ in some kind of cavern. Sam thinks it might be an abandoned mine shaft, but it's dark save for what little light filters through the canopy of the trees in the dense wood above him. He dusts himself off as he stands, debates which direction to go as he fumbles for the flashlight in his pocket.

Sam stumbles across a heaping pile of camping gear after fifteen minutes of slowly following the tunnel. Some of the packs look new, others are covered with dirt and show signs of age. "Dad?" he tries tentatively.

There's a quiet, shaky breath then, "Hello?" - hopeful, relieved, but not his father.

"Hello?" Sam echoes back, panning the weak beam of his flashlight over the bags and higher, seeing a bend in the tunnel.

The Collins girl is trussed up to a warped, wooden support beam, feet barely brushing the ground. Sam takes the knife out of his pocket – the one of Dean's he found – and cuts her down. She sobs against his chest.

"What happened?" Sam asks, gently setting her down on one of the bags in the earthen room.

She shakes her head. "I don't know. It- it came out of _nowhere._ It killed Roy and then- then it took Ben. I was looking for him when-" She breaks off on another sob, shrugging and wiping at the tears cutting through the dirt on her cheeks with her fingers. "I ended up here. I heard- I don't know _what_ I heard." Her body shudders and she looks up at Sam. "It was screeching and growling and I could hear it… _eating._" She closes her eyes then and presses her clenched fists to them.

"I'm gonna get you out of here," Sam tells her, dropping down to his knees to look her in the eye.

"What about Ben? And Tommy?"

Sam glances around for a moment and turns back to the girl. "Okay, we'll look. For a little bit. We don't want to be down here when that thing comes back."

She nods.

"I'm Sam, by the way."

"Haley."

"Okay, Haley." He pats her knee. "Let's go through these bags quick to see if we can find anything to start a fire with." He pulls a bag to himself and pushes another towards Haley. "Lighters, matches…anything."

"Flare guns?" she asks, pulling the plastic, pistol-like gun from an expensive-looking black canvas bag.

Sam grins at her. "Perfect." He helps her back to her feet and she takes a tentative step before nodding at Sam.

"I'm okay."

They continue down the tunnel and barely make it twenty yards before they come to a three-way fork. There's a faint brightness in the branch at the left and Sam thinks that's their way out, but that leaves them to choose between right and straight ahead. A high-pitched shriek makes the decision easy. Sam passes one of the flare guns to Haley, presses it into her palm before pushing her towards the left branch of the tunnel. "Go," he says. "If it comes at you, shoot it."

"But what about-"

"I'll find them. _Go._"

When she finally nods and does as she's told, Sam starts down the tunnel straight ahead, beam of his flashlight illuminating only a handful of feet in front of him as the batteries start to die. It's why he doesn't see the body on the ground until he's tripping over it. The guy's not much older than Sam, bandana tied around his forehead, long gash spanning his torso from collarbones to bellybutton. Sam can see the clean, white bone of his ribs and the cavity where his heart and lungs and liver and everything else used to be. It takes a monumental effort to hold back his urge to vomit and he barely succeeds, stumbling past the body. The screeching of the wendigo draws him further down the tunnel until he comes across another wide space with wooden supports giving the room structure. There are three more bodies bound to the beams here, arms taut above their heads, and Sam recognizes one of them right away.

"Dad?" This is his fault. He shouldn't have run.

John lifts his head weakly. "Sammy?"

"Yeah, Dad. It's me." He goes for his knife, staggers under his father's weight when the ropes give way. When he gets his dad to the ground, he sees the wound. It's not nearly as bad as the kid's in the tunnel, but it's bad. The three ragged cuts are oozing and filthy. "Oh, God."

John pushes Sam's hands away. "Check on them," he says, "before it comes back."

Sam hesitates and eventually nods, moves over to where the other two hang motionless. There's a younger boy – the one Sam saw with Haley yesterday morning, he thinks – and Sam finds him with a thready pulse, a little banged up but otherwise no worse for wear. "Hey," Sam says quietly, slapping his cheek gently at first, then harder until the kid's eyes flutter open.

The kid starts with a sharp gasp, jerking away from Sam's hand until his eyes can focus on Sam's face, then he sags against his bonds. "Haley," he says, voice shaking. "My sister."

"She's okay."

The kid nods. "And Tommy? Is he…?" He struggles in Sam's hold, trying to look at the body beside him. "Is he okay, too?"

Sam glances at the body – at Tommy – and feels his gut clench. "I don't know. Haven't checked yet." He gets the boy cut down and sets him against the tunnel wall beside his father. He goes back for Tommy and knows it's not good. His gut's cut wide open and empty, the dirt beneath his dragging feet is stained dark with blood. Sam cuts him down and gently sets the cold, stiffening body on the ground. "I'm sorry," he says, turning back to the kid, shaking his head.

John interrupts the kid's protest. "We need to get out of here, Sam."

"I know, Dad." He looks at the kid again. "I'm Sam. Are you Ben?"

"Y-yeah."

"Can you walk?"

Ben nods jerkily. "I think so."

"Okay. Then we need to get moving." He hands the flashlight over and helps his dad to his feet. "You go ahead of us. There's a fork in the tunnel not far from here – I think we can get out that way. Your sister's down there."

Ben nods again and stands. He waits until Sam's got his dad up, John's arm wrapped over his shoulders and Sam's around his back, the flare gun in his free hand.

Sam knows when they've reached the body because Ben suddenly stops. Sam nudges him forward. "Just keep going." The fork in the tunnel is just visible when the wendigo gives another terrifying wail, much closer this time. He shoves at Ben's back. "Go! Go right!" They're at the mouth of the branch, he can see the beam of Haley's flashlight at the end, then he's knocked off his feet when something – the wendigo – tries to tear his father away from him.

John screams in pain and Sam can _see_ it. He can see its dark, leathery skin stretched tight over its bones, the long claws buried in his father's belly, and he shoots. The tunnel lights up, bright as day, when the flare is launched into the wendigo's chest and starts sparking. It catches on its papery skin and spreads like a brush fire out of control, reducing the creature to bones and ash before the thing gets out half a shriek. Sam drags his father after Ben and Haley, both of them pale and beyond scared when he reaches them. He can feel warmth seeping into his side and, even with the wendigo dead, fear rises in his chest. "Is there a way out?"

Haley's eyes and the beam of her flashlight are trained on John and her face somehow manages to get even whiter.

"Haley?"

Her gaze darts up to Sam's face. "It's chained shut." She points the flashlight at the corroded lock.

Sam gently lowers his father to the ground and digs his gun out of the back of his waistband. It's loaded with silver bullets, but they should still do the trick. "Stand back," he says, holding the end of the barrel to the top of the padlock. The shot sounds like mortar fire in the small space, makes Sam's ears ring loud enough he doesn't hear the lock fall away to the ground. But the rusting chains slip from the handles easily and Sam kicks them to the side before pushing the doors open. With the full light that comes in through the opening, Sam can see the state his father's in. "You're gonna be okay, Dad," he says.

He binds John's wound the best he can with the flannel shirt Ben had tied about his waist, then Haley silently helps him bear John's weight as they navigate back through the woods, finding a trail that Haley vaguely recognizes and should lead back to the ranger station. The trip takes nearly an hour and John's unconscious by the time they've finally reached help.

John's taken to St. Mary's in downtown Grand Junction with injuries from a bear attack. Sam's confined to the waiting room while his father's in surgery, but a nurse comes out for him a couple of hours later. "Sam Winchester?" she asks. At his affirmative nod, "I need you to follow me."

"Is my dad okay?"

"His surgeon would like to talk to you." She stops halfway down the hallway at an open door and gestures him inside.

The man sitting behind the desk is about John's age, tired, dark eyes meeting Sam's as he stands and offers his hand. "Mr. Winchester? I'm Dr. Henshaw."

Sam shakes the surgeon's hand and tries not to think of how it was just inside his father's body, trying to save his life. "How's my dad?"

Dr. Henshaw's gaze drops slightly before returning back to Sam's. "He lost a lot of blood. His wounds were extensive and we had to remove quite a bit of his small intestine."

"But he's going to be okay?"

"I'm sorry, son, but we did everything we could. He doesn't have much time. We'll do our best to keep him comfortable, but you should start getting a hold of family."

Sam nods, tears thick in his throat, barely managing his next question. "Can I see him?"

"Of course." He leads Sam out of his office and further down the hall, through doors marked ICU.

Sam takes a deep breath in an attempt to steady himself before he enters the room bearing his father's name in fading black marker on a dry-erase board.. His dad's on the bed in a pale blue hospital gown, white blanket pulled up to his chest, face ashen beneath his dark beard. He's hooked up to a couple of machines to his left – a heart monitor that beeps slowly, and something else – and another behind him that Sam thinks is the oxygen that's fed to him through the tube under his nose. He looks bad, but he doesn't look like he's going to _die._

"Hey, Sammy," John says, rough voice quiet.

"Hey, Dad." Sam sinks into the chair beside the bed and reaches for his father's hand. "There's gotta be something we can do."

John shakes his head. "Nothing worth what it would cost."

Sam refuses to believe that. "There's gotta be _something_-" he starts again, but John cuts him off.

"_No._ Now you listen to me. Everything I've got on that demon is in my journal. You gotta let me go and you've gotta find Dean. Find him and you go after this demon together."

"I will, Dad. _We_ will. But how am I supposed to find him?"

"You gotta go back to Lawrence, go to Missouri Moseley. She- she can help."

"Does she know where Dean is?"

"Maybe. But she can help with other things, too."

Sam's confused. "What other things?"

"Have you been having…_visions_ or anything like that? Or noticed you've had other abilities?"

"What?" Sam thinks about the dream.

"I know it sounds crazy, but it's _important,_ Sam. When you were a baby, when your mother died, the demon- He _did_ something to you."

"_What?_" Sam can't help the way his voice raises at that – that a demon, _the_ demon, gave him some kind of psychic ability when he was a baby? It's insane.

John licks his lips and shifts on the bed, wincing in pain but pushing through it until he's sitting up straighter. He looks a decade older than his fifty-one years. "Sam."

Sam rubs at his face with his hands. "I've had weird dreams," he finally says. "Before Jess died, I dreamed about it – about the fire, about her on the ceiling – _months_ before it happened. I just thought it was end-of-the-school year stress. Then- then it _happened._"

"Was that the only time?"

"I think so, yeah. I mean, I used to have crazy dreams all the time as a kid, but they went away not long after I found out you were a hunter."

John reaches for Sam's hand. "When I- You have to go to Missouri. She can _help._"

"Okay."

"There's a revolver in the lock box in the back of my truck. It's the only gun of its kind, made by Samuel Colt a hundred and seventy years ago, and it can kill _anything._"

Something in his father's voice piques Sam's curiosity, sets his thoughts turning. "Like the _demon,_ anything?"

"Exactly. The combination is- it's the date your mother died." He pauses. "And you need to call Pastor Jim. He can take care of everything."

"Dad."

"You shouldn't have to do this, Sammy."

"But I can and I need to. It's my fault." He shakes his head and buries his face in his hands.

"Hey, Sammy. Sam. It's not. It's _not._ Now, go call Jim." At Sam's defiant look, "That's an order."

**PART TWO - DEAN**

It takes a few frustrating hours to get Dean halfway back to where he was when he'd shown up at Bobby's door just a week ago. He pores over the notebooks in his room, some of what he's written striking familiar, but much of it just doesn't come back. Bobby chocks it up to the lack of human interaction – Dean has been puttering around the house, alone save for Rumsfeld, with nothing to keep him mentally engaged. It takes nearly the rest of the day before Dean lets his guard down around the older hunter and he feels absolutely worn out from being constantly on edge. Bobby scrounges up a piece of rough, yellowing paper and passes it off to Dean with a stubby, but sharp, pencil before situating himself across from Dean at the table in the kitchen.

"What's this for?" Dean asks, pushing his mug of coffee aside.

"Draw me," Bobby says. He scratches at his head through his cap and tugs at the bill to settle it back into place. "Maybe if you have visual reminders, you won't forget."

Dean thinks about the notes he found when he woke up, the one with his name and where he is on it and the others in his wallet. It doesn't seem like it could hurt. But Bobby's idea hinges on whether or not he can even _draw._ He shrugs and sketches out a tentative oval approximating the height and width of Bobby's head on a smaller scale, a couple of lines for his neck and shoulders before he moves up to draw in the man's ever-present ball cap. It's not all that bad, starts to look like Bobby as he fills in facial features and smaller details: the squint of his eyes under the shadow of the bill, the slight scruff of beard. After fifteen minutes or so, it's not bad at all. He holds the sketch out at arm's-length and looks from it to Bobby and back again. "Hm."

"Well?" Bobby sits up a little straighter and reaches for the page.

Dean hands it over with another shrug. "Could be worse, I guess. It's not a stick figure."

The corner of Bobby's mouth quirks up at that. "Boy, nobody'd ever draw me as a stick figure." He peruses the sketch for a while, eyebrows arched with slight surprise. "Never knew you to be artsy."

Dean grins and snatches the drawing away. "If you're going to make fun-"

"That's not it at all, Dean. It's good. Looks like me. You even got the wrinkles right."

"Yeah, well." He flips the paper over and writes out _Bobby Singer – Sioux Falls, SD_. Under that he adds _hunter, mechanic, has an extensive library,_ skips a line, _can be __**trusted**__, makes the best chili and cornbread._ He knows there's a lot more to the list, but he can't remember it. It's the basics and the important stuff.

Bobby stands from the table and pushes his chair in. "You 'bout hungry, yet?"

"Starving," Dean answers, opening his most recent journal and putting the sketch in the back for safe keeping.

"You and your brother," Bobby muses, turning towards the pantry, "always starving. Think the lot of ya were born with hollow legs."

Dean pauses mid-reach for his mug of lukewarm coffee and turns in his chair to look at Bobby. "Brother?"

Two days after Bobby's return, Dean found himself in Doctor Lionel Curtis' office – after hours, of course – for an extensive battery of testing and brain scans that lasted for the worst part of three hours. He'd hated the MRI; he felt like he was in a coffin, buried alive. Some of the results they got back right away, others they would have to wait for. But nothing Dr. Curtis saw looked abnormal in any way.

Bobby admitted, as they left the hospital that night, that he was starting to think whatever was going on with Dean's memory wasn't something science would be able to explain. Especially after how quickly Dean's condition had deteriorated in the couple of days Bobby had been gone, he was nearly positive something supernatural had caused the amnesia. But they still haven't found anything in Bobby's vast library that points to a culprit – Bobby's thinking it's the result of contact with a cursed object or some kind of spell, but there's no way to tell what or which one or if there's even a way to break the hold that's on him.

As much as Bobby wants to help Dean get to the bottom of this, he has other responsibilities. It's Dean that points it out after another four days immersed in the library with Bobby dodging calls offering _I'll get back to you_s or passing along the cases he's called into. "There's gotta be somewhere else I can go where I won't be so much in the way."

"You're not in the way, son," Bobby says, like it's the most absurd thing he's ever heard. "We'll get to the bottom of this."

"It's not gonna be any time soon," Dean contends. "We've been at this for a while."

"I know."

"And we're not much closer than we were when we started, are we? All we know for certain is what's going on in my melon's not normal." He closes the book he's been leafing through for an hour and sets it aside. "Can you think of anybody that'd be willing to take in a headcase like me?"

Bobby rolls his eyes and sets his own book aside. "I guess there's Jim Murphy-" he interrupts himself with a minute shake of his head as though he's dismissing the thought. "Actually, I think I know who I can send you to. Last place your daddy'd probably look." He nods, gaze stuck in some middle-distance just over Dean's right shoulder. "I'm gonna make a call."

And that's how Dean finds himself with his two duffels, a couple of his journals and the few weapons he's still got, as well as a half dozen new spiral notebooks and a sketchpad and pencils courtesy of one Bobby Singer, in the passenger seat of Bobby's Chevelle as they head west on I-90 the following morning. The drive passes slowly, the view a bleak winter landscape beyond the window, the coffee in his waxed paper cup gone a cold, undrinkable sludge.

Bobby turns off the highway at what he tells Dean is the halfway mark, the small town of Kadoka, a handful of miles north of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. He stretches his legs while Bobby refuels, then both of them head inside for more coffee and a couple stale-looking pastries. It's not a lot, but it'll tide them over until they reach the Roadhouse. Bobby promises there's a juicy, grease-dripping cheeseburger and a bottle of Corona waiting for him at the end of this road-trip.

Another four and half hours in the car brings them some twenty-plus miles from the Wyoming and Colorado state lines, another tiny, Midwestern town just off I-80 in the southwestern corner of Nebraska. Kimball isn't much of anything; it looks just like every other farm-town with more than two paved roads on the rolling prairie land that stretches between the Rockies and the Appalachians. Main Street is quiet, nearly empty, only a few rusting cars and pickups in the parking spaces along the slush-filled road. Most of the storefronts are dark – the only lights Dean sees as they pass are the red-and-blue neon of a PBR sign in the window of a bar, a dimly lit diner, and a corner store with flickering fluorescents beneath the tattered blue awning over the door.

No more than five minutes later, the houses at the edge of town give way to barren, snow-covered fields and they're heading back into open country. "It's not far," Bobby says, turning on the headlights as the sun starts to sink behind leaden clouds to the west. A couple miles out, Bobby takes a left on a gravel county road and, another mile more, a couple low buildings appear on the horizon. One stands tall and dark on the rise of a hill with a squatty, undefined shape of a shed or some other outbuilding some seventy-five yards or so off to the north; the other, settled in the slight valley, is only one story, windows bright with a warm, yellow light. As they approach, Dean can read the neon sign above the door: _Harvelle's Roadhouse._

Bobby parks next to a two-tone El Camino and turns off the engine. Dean leans forward to look out the windshield at the bar. "So... this is it?"

"Home sweet home," Bobby intones before climbing out.

Dean follows a moment later, grabbing his bags from the backseat. All he knows about this place is what Bobby's told him on the drive: the Roadhouse is a bar, has a few rooms in the back that are rented out to weary hunters for cheap when they're passing through and need a place to stay; it's become a hub of sorts in the hunting community over the years where hunters come to trade war stories and try to track down leads and jobs alike; it's been run by Ellen Harvelle for nearly twenty years, the last twelve on her own. Bobby didn't go much into Ellen's history after that, just mentioned that she now ran the place with the help of her daughter, Jo – "If you know what's good for ya, you'll keep your hands to yourself. Ellen's doing the both of us a favor and she's protective of that girl," Bobby had told him. "Treat her like a sister."

Hefting his bags over his shoulder, Dean pushes through the door after Bobby, drawing the curious gazes of the few patrons gathered around a handful of the tables in pairs and the attractive woman behind the bar. She's older, dark hair tucked behind her ears to keep it out of her face as she leans over the sink to empty beer bottles and rinse out glasses. A smile curves her mouth when her eyes land on Bobby and she pulls the towel off her shoulder to dry her hands as she rounds the end of the counter to intercept him. "Hey, Bobby," she says warmly, slapping away his hand and giving him a brief hug instead. "It's been a while."

"Too long," Bobby agrees, and Dean gets the impression it's not just platitudes. "You remember Dean."

Her dark eyes focus on him, gaze appraising. She nods, offers her hand. "Ellen Harvelle."

"Dean," he says, slightly surprised by her firm grip. "Uh, Winchester. Dean Winchester."

Ellen stares at him curiously for a moment before turning back to Bobby. "So, amnesia, huh?"

Bobby glances at Dean out of the corner of his eye. "Seems like. He was fine – well, _mostly_ fine – when he got to me, but when I came back from that job with Rufus..."

"Well, I can put him to work here, keep him busy."

"Whatever you need," Dean says, not really liking that they're talking about him like he's not standing right there. "But I don't know how much use I'll be."

"Tending bar's not rocket science, kid. You'll do fine." She gives Dean another once-over and nods again. "Long drive – bet you boys are starving."

Dean meets Jo while Ellen's back in the kitchen frying up his and Bobby's burgers and he understands the older man's warning. Jo's young, pretty, Trouble-with-a-capital-T plain as day in the false innocence of her bright blue eyes and the coy curve of her mouth. She heads behind the bar with two handfuls of Walmart bags that she sets aside out of Dean's line of sight before pulling off her jacket and hanging it on an empty hook on the wall next to the doorway to the kitchen. The flakes of snow in her pale blonde hair melt to nothing in the time it takes her to turn around and level an interested gaze at him.

Bobby interrupts before she can even speak. "How're you doin', kiddo? Last time I saw you, you were all knobby knees and pigtails."

The flush on her cheeks from the cold darkens further with her embarrassment. "It hasn't been _that_ long."

Dean smirks at the slight whine in her voice. He finishes his beer and waves the empty bottle at her. "Mind getting me another, _kiddo_?"

The stare she turns on him could put Medusa to shame. Blue eyes wild, she pulls another Corona out of the cooler behind the bar, pops off the cap, and slams the bottle on the bar hard enough to make the beer inside slosh out and down the neck. She whirls back around and stalks off into the kitchen.

He turns to Bobby with a sheepish grin. "Must've struck a nerve."

Bobby's shaking his head and scratching at his forehead with his thumb. "Just remember you're playing with fire, there."

Dean laughs. "I'll make a note of it."

After dinner – cheeseburger just as delicious as Bobby promised – Dean gets a chance to have Ellen and a very reluctant Jo sit down long enough for him to sketch them. As he did with Bobby's, he writes the key information on the back of the drawings, a big, underlined, _HANDS OFF!_ on Jo's. He glances at Ellen as she's wiping down a table and adds the warning to the back of her portrait as well. Better safe than sorry.

It's nearing midnight and Jo shows Bobby to one of the back rooms. Dean heads over to Ellen where she's emptying more beer bottles into the sink. "What about me? Where'm I staying?"

"I've got a place for you out back." She dries her hands on her towel and comes out from behind the bar. The place has been dead since ten when the snow really started to fall and Ellen crosses the room to lock the front door and turn off the outside lights and the signs in the windows. "Grab your bags and follow me," she tells him, going back behind the counter for her coat and moving towards the kitchen doorway.

Dean pulls on his jacket and shoulders his bags, following her through the kitchen and past the steel door of the walk-in cooler. On the hill behind the Roadhouse, the third point in an obtuse triangle, is an old Airstream camper. One of those slick, silver bullet-shaped RV's right out of the seventies. There's a vague path in the crust of snow that they follow silently. Ellen pulls a key ring from her pocket and passes it off to him.

"The green one is for this door," she explains, and Dean sees that the few keys on the ring are color-coded with rubber grips. "There's a note on the counter by the microwave for what's what and another one behind the bar – I'll show you that tomorrow. I figured it'd be easier for you."

Dean selects the green key and opens the door. "Yeah, that'll help. Thanks." He's been getting this odd vibe from her from time to time that makes him feel tense and he wonders if it has to do with the past that Bobby wouldn't tell him about. He's grateful that the strain has dissipated for now and heads inside.

Ellen flips on a switch beside the door. "We converted it a few years back to make it a little more...livable. The bedroom's down that way, at the end of the hall," she says, pointing to the left. "The bathroom is the first door on the right and there's a small closet next to it. The furnace and water heater are in there. Um..." She rubs her hands together and looks around. "Kitchen there." She hooks her thumb to the right where there's a half-wall separating the kitchen from the living room. "It's not much-"

"It's more than enough," Dean interrupts. "Really."

Ellen shrugs. "If you need anything else...?"

"I think I'm good."

"All right, then." She turns to leave and Dean reaches for her elbow.

"Thank you."

Some emotion he can't name crosses her face and she offers him a half smile. "You're welcome."

Dean watches her trudge down the hill and back into the Roadhouse before he locks the door and kicks off his boots. He drops his jacket over the arm of the couch and drags his duffels back to the bedroom, pausing to look into the bathroom on his way. Everything looks clean and fairly new and he somehow knows it's more than he had a lot of the time, growing up.

The bed in his room is big enough it nearly fills up the small space. It's pushed up against the far wall into the right corner, two high windows covered with gauzy, time-yellowed curtains above it. Next to the low mattress, in the two short feet between the low frame and the wall the doorway's on, there's a nightstand with a lamp and alarm clock. He pulls out his journals and sets them in front of the lamp and digs a pair of sweats from his bags before shoving them into the closet to his right. Only the wall to the left is completely open, no windows, nothing shoved up against it, and Dean knows what he's going to use it for.

While in search of a roll of tape, he finds the kitchen fully stocked. In the cabinet beneath the sink, there's a tool box with a few different half-rolls of lint-covered tape. Thin roll of off-white masking tape in hand, he fills up a glass with water from the pitcher in the fridge and heads back to his room. After setting the glass on the nightstand, he takes the three sketches out of the back of his journal and tapes them onto the wall by the top two corners. Dean turns and sits on the edge of the mattress, looking at the small portrait gallery of the only faces he knows.

The alarm goes off early the next morning, an annoying buzz that sets Dean to slapping aimlessly in the direction of the noise. He manages to knock his journals to the floor as he flails a blind arm and nearly catches the lamp, too. He'd rather stay immersed in the good dream he's having – it's the only thing that'll take the edge off the nightmare that woke him from a dead sleep barely an hour after he'd turned in last night. Hand finally connecting with either the snooze or off button, the alarm falls into silence, and Dean lays there for a moment, trying to hold on to the comfort of his dream. It's no use; he's awake. With a groan, he rolls over to the edge of the mattress to flip on the lamp and pick up his fallen notebooks, opening his dream journal to detail the nightmare before it fades from memory.

It's hazy and dim, trees casting heavy shadows, and there's a monster taunting a man. The man's visibly scared, calling out for someone that Dean can't see. The monster is fast, a dark blur as it runs circles around the somehow familiar man. He's older, dark hair just starting to go gray at the temples, salt-and-pepper scruff of a beard. The creature mimics him, throws his voice around, gets him confused before sprinting at him from behind, and Dean can see it in the split second it slows, thin, leather-skinned arm reaching out a clawed hand to catch the man in the gut before tearing off through the woods with him.

It leaves an unsettled feeling in his stomach that the face in his _good_ dream can barely chase away. But he closes the dream journal and takes his sketchpad out from beneath the short stack of notebooks. As he puts the pencil to the page, though, the man from his dream becomes elusive, features falling away until all he can keep sight of in his mind are a pair of bright hazel eyes, corners tilted in a way that lend his stare something mischievous. Dean commits what he can to the page, adding in the thin bridge of a nose and the vague suggestion of a long, strong jaw, the dark fall of hair across a high forehead. No matter how hard he tries to remember, the eyes are the only thing the dream has left behind in his mind.

Dean tears the sketch from the pad and tapes it to the wall a few feet to the right of the other three portraits that hang there. _Bobby, Ellen, Jo,_ he reads from the bottom left corner of each sketch. Half-formed memories of the previous day rise to the surface and he recognizes the hunter, the woman that runs the bar and her daughter.

The alarm clock starts blaring again and Dean turns from the wall and puts the sketchbook away before turning off the alarm again. There's a post-it on the face of the clock, over the numbers: _Harvelle's Roadhouse – Kimball, NE – new job._ He glances at the portraits behind him and feels the tug of memory. The Roadhouse is Ellen's bar and it's just down the hill from this trailer. Bobby brought him here. The previous day's entry in his regular journal tells him he's right, and that he remembered anything at all is a surprise.

He showers and dresses, looks at his reflection in the mirror and the lone note stuck to the steam-fogged glass that is curling with the moisture in the closet-sized bathroom. "My name is Dean Winchester," he reads from it. For now, his name is something he _knows._ Knows it like he knows how to speak and write and breathe. It's ingrained into him. For now. His memory is fading, the fabric of it wearing thin, threads fraying until everything it holds is slipping through and away. The notes, the journal, the sketches – they're all just patches, slapped on in desperate haste. They'll give one day, maybe soon, and every last bit of who he is and what he knows will spill, and there'll be nothing left.

It makes Dean's chest ache and his stomach turn with inexplicable fear. The feeling makes him remember the look on the man's face in his nightmare. The absolute terror in his eyes as the monster sunk its claws into his belly and carried him away as he screamed for help.

Even as he trudges down the hill through ankle-deep snow, the fear twines around his insides and chills him in a way that even the frigid air of the Nebraska plain can't. It clings to him more closely than a noonday shadow, leaves him uneasy all morning. It's a struggle to keep up while Ellen shows him the ropes and he scrawls notes in the pocket-sized notepad she gave him first thing.

It's early afternoon and he's in the walk-in for a case of Old Mill when a searing pain behind his eyes whites out his vision and sends him to his knees.

_He can smell the decay of the woods through the crisp, thin air, can hear a man calling out, terrified._ It's the nightmare. _Then it's dark, musty and dank, and he knows he's underground. Pain twinges in his hip from the fall. He's in a cave. No, it's a tunnel. The beam of his flashlight is anemic, but it's better than nothing. There's a girl, tied to a wooden beam overhead – she's alive. As they move deeper into the tunnel – abandoned mine shaft – they can hear the monster screeching. At the fork they come to, he sends her down one branch while he keeps going straight ahead. He nearly stumbles over a body, the kid torn open, gutted._ The thing with the claws – that did this. _But he continues on, finds more bodies strung up- DAD!_ It's the man from the nightmare, the one the creature carried away. _The man's alive and relief washes over him. The younger boy is okay but the other one...The older boy is left on the floor because nothing can be done for him now. They're nearly back to the fork in the tunnel when the monster – wendigo – attacks them from behind as they make their way back through the tunnel. He just needs to get the man and the boy to safety, but there's no time. The man – his father – is gored by the wendigo again and he levels the gun clutched in this hand at it, pulls the trigger and sets loose a shower of light and sparks. The wendigo bursts into flame and disintegrates even as it screams. They're safe. But not all of them are going to survive._

Dean's curled over his knees on the cold, cement floor of the cooler, trying to catch his breath and calm his heart. His head throbs when he opens his eyes but he pushes past it to dig his notepad from his back pocket and write down what he can remember of the vision. _Abandoned mine, woods, thin air, wendigo._

Vision.

This is bad – worse than memory loss and nightmares. This is- _He_ is-

He can't think it. All this time, all the nightmares he's had, and maybe...

Dean shoves the notepad back into his pockets and climbs up off the floor, grabbing the case of beer he was sent in for. He nearly runs right into Jo when he comes out of the walk-in.

"There you are," she says, the exasperated expression on her face becoming concerned when she gets a good look at him. "Hey, are you okay?"

_No,_ he thinks, pasting on a fake smile that makes him feel hollow. "Peachy."

Bobby's at the bar when Dean comes out of the back room, coat on, keys in hand.

"You headin' out?"

"Yeah. Got a case in Minnesota."

Dean nods, rounding the counter to offer Bobby his hand. "Thanks for everything." He knows he should say something about the vision, but he can't get the words out.

"You're welcome, kid," Bobby says after a moment. He looks like he wants to say more, but he shakes his head and pulls Dean into a half-hug. "Be careful and mind Ellen."

"Yes, sir." Dean wonders at the warning, wonders if Bobby suspects there's more wrong with him than just his strange case of amnesia.

The notepad in Dean's pocket feels heavier and heavier with every step Bobby takes towards the door after his goodbyes to Ellen and Jo. The words to stop him are right on the tip of Dean's tongue but he swallows them down.


	4. Part Three

**PART THREE - SAM**

Sam watches the pyre burn, orange flames glaringly bright against the falling darkness. He stands upwind of the fire, Pastor Jim at his side, as it consumes his father. He can't escape it – nearly everything important in his life is eventually reduced to ash. Fire is greedy and fickle and it doesn't discriminate.

Now, more than ever, Sam wishes he knew where Dean was, that his brother was with him because he doesn't want to go through this alone. Doesn't want to track the demon down on his own. He'd promised his dad he'd go back to Lawrence and talk to Missouri. If she doesn't have the answers he desperately needs, Sam doesn't know what he'll do.

Jim reaches out and squeezes his shoulder, says soft words of what Sam assumes are encouragement that he can't hear over the hiss-pop of the blaze in front of him. He nods, shoves his hands deeper into the pockets of his jacket in an attempt to ward off the chill of the mountain air as it seeps into his bones. His frozen fingers graze his father's dog tags and Sam's heart seizes in his chest at the thought that these scraps of metal and a leather-bound journal are all that's really left of his father.

When he finally finds Dean, what's he supposed to say? Is he supposed to be angry because Dean made him go through this alone? Is he supposed to be grateful that, for once, he was able to spare the hardship of their lives from Dean? And what if he doesn't? What if there _is_ no Dean to be found? What if Sam's looking for a ghost?

It's the thought of never finding his brother – that not only is he an orphan at twenty-two, but he's completely on his own – that makes him break. It's too much to take and the tears start to fall. He hates that he's this weak, but right now he doesn't know how he's supposed to be strong.

Sam shudders out a breath and swipes the wetness from his cheeks with the rough sleeves of his coat and stands sentry until the fire starts to die down and, well after dark, becomes nothing more than smoldering ashes. Jim pokes at the glowing embers with a long stick.

There's really nothing left.

"Are you going to be okay, Sam?" Jim asks, leaning on his stick, face pale in the dim moonlight.

"Yeah," Sam lies. "Thanks for..." _- driving all night to get here, giving my father the hunter's funeral I couldn't, keeping me together, just being here -_ "everything."

Jim's smile is small and sad as he pulls Sam into a hug. It reminds Sam of summers when he was a kid, sunshine and the open, grassy field behind the small parish in Blue Earth – Jim freely offered the kind of affection his own father rarely did – and Sam finds himself gripping the older man tightly. "You're welcome, Sam. You ever need anything else, don't hesitate to call." He pulls away and his own eyes glisten wetly. "I've got Deacon and Caleb looking into Dean's whereabouts. I'll do what I can to help you find him."

Sam feels the burden weighing him down lighten just a little. "Thank you."

With another squeeze to Sam's shoulder, Pastor Jim steps back and starts for his car. When he opens the trunk, Sam crosses the distance between the scorched earth of the pyre and his father's truck, pulling open the passenger side door to find an empty water bottle or an old coffee cup or something else to hold some of his father's ashes. It's morbid, he knows, but if he's going to Lawrence, the least he can do is take part of his father with him so he can rest with his mother. It's more symbolic than anything – with any hope, they've both crossed over. But Sam feels it's something he has to do regardless.

Jim watches him silently scoop the ashes from the center of the blackened patch of earth into the styrofoam cup with its plastic lid and gives Sam a nod when he finally backs away. "Earth to earth," he mutters, pushing the point of the shovel into the dirt and overturning the earth, "ashes to ashes," with a grunt of effort to dig below the permafrost, "dust to dust;" working his way around the charred land until any evidence of fire has been erased. "In sure and certain hope of the Resurrection into eternal life."

With those final words, John Winchester is laid to rest at the edge of the woods in the middle of western Colorado.

Sam only makes it as far as Burlington before he's too exhausted to go further. It's well after midnight when he pulls into the dim, pot-holed lot of an L-shaped, two-story motel. He makes a mental note of the gas station across the street before he all but stumbles into the office.

The man behind the counter is watching ESPN, feet kicked up on the low table the TV sits on, a plate with a half-eaten sandwich and potato chips on his lap. He glances over his shoulder at Sam, setting his plate aside and wiping his hands off on his thighs as he drop his feet to the floor and turns the chair around. "How can I help you?" he asks tiredly.

"Just need a room for the night," Sam says, digging his wallet out of his back pocket, sorting through the few credit cards he has that'll be maxed out soon enough.

"Single or double?"

_Double,_ he nearly says, catching himself at the last minute. He's alone now. No need for a second bed. "Single." He sets his emergencies-only Visa on the counter and stifles a yawn with the back of his hand.

"Sixty-seven dollars," the man says, sliding the card off the counter and swiping it through the machine attached to the ancient desktop computer. There's a loud whirring sound, then the printer next to the monitor grinds to life, spitting out Sam's receipt.

Sam's not asked for his signature – he's just handed the printout and a key attached to a diamond-shaped piece of orange plastic with the number "14" on it.

"First floor, behind the office, by the second light pole. Checkout is eleven."

"Thanks," Sam offers with a nod, folding the receipt in fours and shoving it into his pocket.

The room is small and cleaner than Sam expected it to be. There are no visible bugs and the stale scent of cigarette smoke is minimal and it's a far cry better than some of the motels he and Dean were stuck in while their dad was away on out-of-town jobs when they were younger. The heater works, spewing out musty, hot air and the shower stall isn't growing any kind of fungus. So Sam showers the smell of charred flesh and bone from his skin and washes it from his hair, letting ash and dirt and sweat slide from his body and down the drain as the hot water relaxes his muscles from the tension of the day, of his father's funeral.

When he climbs between the sheets , they're stiff and smell faintly of bleach when he climbs between them. That's the last thing he remembers before the alarm on his cell phone is beeping loudly at him from the nightstand, bright sunlight cutting through the gap in the dingy brown-tan-orange striped curtains over the window.

Sam's out of bed and dressed in five minutes, nearly the entire state of Kansas to traverse today and one psychic to track down, so he needs to get on the road as soon as possible. He drops the key off at the motel office and drives across the street to fill up the truck's tank and grab yet another gas station breakfast.

The further east he gets, the less snow covers the ground and the tighter the knot of apprehension in his gut becomes. Once he reaches Salina, the snow is no more than a dusting, skies an endless bright blue. When he reaches Lawrence, his first stop is the Oak Hill Cemetery where he hasn't been in a good decade or so. But the Campbell family plot isn't difficult to locate; straight down the main road until it forks, turn right, and four narrow drives back on the left side, a large, weathered marble weeping angel overlooking the headstones.

Sam parks his father's truck along the edge of the grass and climbs out, cup of ashes in hand. He passes the grave markers of the grandparents he and Dean were named after and kneels before his mother's. Dirt and bits of grass cling to the dark granite and Sam wipes them away with his sleeve. "I'm so sorry I couldn't save him," Sam says, prying the lid off the coffee cup and spilling his father's ashes into the dried grass in front of the headstone. "I never should've left. I should've been there, we should've all been _together._ It's all my fault." His father would probably still be alive and Dean wouldn't be lost, and Jess...

He never wanted to go, not really. But Dean pushed him. Begged him to take the scholarship, to go have the normal life they never had growing up. "_You're smart, Sam. Smarter than I ever was. Can't just let that go to waste. And look at all these schools that want you. That are willing to pay for everything. You can't pass this up,"_ Dean had all but pleaded. There was more to it than the seemingly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, something Dean wouldn't tell him. But he pushed and pushed and pulled further and further away from Sam. "_Just, please, Sammy. You can be so much more than this. You __**deserve**__ so much more than this."_ More than the life or Dean, Sam never was sure. Still isn't.

So he kneels before his mother's grave and prays until his feet are numb and his legs are stiff. Prays for forgiveness and guidance in finding his wayward brother.

Missouri proves easy enough to find as there's only a handful of psychics listed in the Kansas City Area Yellow Pages he finds dangling from a twisted cable attached to a graffiti-covered payphone. Sam tears out the page and folds it down into a square with Missouri Moseley's address and phone number facing out.

Missouri's a formidable woman, knowing dark eyes staring at him as he climbs the steps of her porch. She stands in her doorway, thin shawl draped over her shoulders, like she's been waiting. And, from what his father's told him about the woman, she probably has. A wide smile cracks her stern face, teeth blindingly white against the dark warmth of her skin, and she waves him closer with both of her hands. "My, look at how you've _grown._"

Sam doesn't remember ever having met her but her presence is welcoming. He feels the slightest shock when her hands grasp his, a little jolt that sends his gaze to her face.

Missouri's eyes are sad and she squeezes Sam's hands gently. "Poor baby. All alone." She shakes her head. "Come with me." Then she's tugging him inside, closing the door behind them.

The house smells like cinnamon-sugar and coffee and it makes Sam's stomach rumble loudly.

Missouri smiles again, but it doesn't chase the melancholy from her face. She leads him down the hall and into the kitchen, gestures for him to sit at the table. "I'm sorry about your father," she says, pouring two cups of coffee, setting one in front of Sam before returning to the counter for sugar and cream, and a plate with slices of fresh cinnamon bread.

"Thanks." Sam fixes up his coffee and takes a piece of bread from the plate. "He said you might be able to help me find Dean."

Missouri nods. "What else did he tell you?"

"About you? Not much. Just said you could help."

"Did he ask you about your abilities?" She glances up at him quickly before sipping at her coffee.

"Yeah, but..." Sam sits up straighter in his chair. "I don't _have_ any abilities."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm not psychic."

She scoots her chair closer to the corner of the table and leans forward, offering her hands. "Here."

Hesitating, Sam lays his palms over Missouri's, feels that same static shock.

Her forehead wrinkles in concentration then in confusion. "Hm." She tilts her head like she's listening to something, leans in even closer to Sam. "I don't understand." Missouri sits back, still holding Sam's hands, and shakes her head. "It doesn't make sense."

"What?"

"I don't- It's like they've been _stripped away_ from you. The potential is there, but the _ability_ is gone." She sighs and takes her hands from Sam, folding them in her lap. "There are other kids out there like you, they've all got psychic abilities that are unparalleled by anything I've ever even heard of. The demon made you all so strong. But you... Do you ever remember having power of any kind? Telepathy? Telekinesis? Pyrokinesis?"

"I had a dream about Jess – my girlfriend – before she died. It was _months_ before it actually happened." He shrugs a shoulder, picks at the peeling laminate surface of the table with his thumb before continuing on with the rest of what he'd told his dad. "I had vivid nightmares as a kid. They were terrible, people always dying." Then he tells Missouri something he didn't tell his father. "They were always killed by monsters or ghosts – things my dad hunted. But those stopped not long after I found out what Dad really did. I just figured it was because I knew I was safe, you know?"

"Did anything _else_ happen around that time? Anything at all."

Sam wracks his brain, trying to think of anything weird, but it was so long ago. There is _one_ thing, but he doesn't think it has anything to do with this. "Dean started having nightmares about then. But Dad had just started taking him on hunts. I figured..."

There's something in Missouri's stare that gives Sam pause. She raises her eyebrows and stands. "Let's try something."

Again, Sam follows her down the hallway to a cozy living room with overstuffed furniture and a fire burning in the hearth. There are herbs and flowers hanging upside down from the brick mantle, brittle and leeched of color. He watches as Missouri selects a few leaves and petals and places them into the mortar sitting atop the brick facade. She then grinds them for a few moments with the pestle and adds a couple drops of something viscous from a pewter decanter. She turns back to Sam, thumb stuck into the mixture in the mortar. "What is that?" he asks.

"It'll help you remember." She gestures to the couch and settles next to him when he finally sits, and swipes the brown paste from temple to temple across his forehead. "Now, close your eyes and try to relax," Missouri tells him, placing the mortar and pestle on the coffee table in front of her.

He only does as she asks because his father said he could trust her.

"I want you to go back, Sam. Go back to the last vision you had as a child."

Sam never said anything about _visions._ Nightmares, yes. But visions? So it's a shock when the memory surfaces, unbidden except for Missouri's words.

_The farmhouse is old, creaking wood floors, warped lead-glass in the windows, books everywhere. Uncle Bobby's. Dad's standing at the door and the car's still running outside. Bobby's in the hall behind them, stained rag in his hands and grease on his brow. Dean's standing next to Sam and they've each got a duffels slung over their shoulders. "Bill's got a job out in California he needs my help with. I"ll only be gone a few days. You boys behave."_

Sam and Dean offer their Yes-sir_'s and watch him go._

Barely two days later, Bobby gets a call of his own and Sam and Dean are being left completely on their own with explicit instructions to "keep your hands to yourselves, don't snoop, don't answer the phone, and don't kill each other." But it's said in a fond way Sam's unaccustomed to and Dean just rolls his eyes and is browsing through Bobby's weapon cache before the dust in the driveway's even settled.

Sam has his first full-blown vision right at the dinner table as Dean's taking the pan of mac and cheese off the stove. _**Dad's half hidden by a cluster of boulders and he's watching some man Sam doesn't recognize. The creature appears out of nowhere, then Dad's moving and the thing's turning around and the man's right there and he can't get away. Dad's yelling, raising his gun, but it's too late. The monster is already attacking the man, long claws cutting across his belly and then his guts are- But he doesn't die and the monster gets away. Then Dad's there, beside him, and the man's begging to die. "Please, **_**please, **_**let me die." And Dad kills him, burns the body like he's supposed to.**_

It's just like the wendigo, Sam thinks, stomach sinking.

_Sam barely has time to utter "Dad" and "monster" before he blacks out from the pain behind his eyes._ There's more, but it's got the hazy, unreal quality of a dream. _Dean's frantic, trying to wake him up. He drags Sam into the library and starts tearing through the books on Bobby's shelves, the slowly dying fire the only thing that shows how much time has passed before Dean returns to his side with a sheet of age-browned paper in one hand, his pocket knife in the other. There are tears on his face as he apologizes, kisses Sam's forehead before lifting Sam's hand and peeling off the band-aid there from their morning sparring session. Dean gently reopens the cut across Sam's thumb and slices open his own palm, presses the amulet around his neck into the welling blood seeping from their wounds, cupping the whole mess between both of his own hands as he starts speaking in some language Sam doesn't recognize. He looks scared and determined, cheeks damp, lips trembling as he stumbles over unfamiliar words. He closes his eyes when he's done. "Please work," he begs, clutching Sam's hand tighter. "Please." Suddenly, Dean's whole body spasms and he collapses to the floor._

Sam doesn't remember any of this – he remembers his father leaving, only to come back a day or so after Bobby, bruised and haggard. He barked out orders for Sam and Dean to get their things together the moment he came through the door. He and Dean both heard the argument between their father and Bobby – the accusations that John was reckless and thoughtless, and didn't he _give a damn_ about his boys? Did he want his sons to grow up without _any_ parents? There was more, low angry words that Sam didn't hear, then they were gone. They never saw Bobby again after that.

"Sam?" Missouri lays a gentle hand on his forearm. "You okay, sweetie?"

"Yeah. I just." He shakes his head, not quite able to believe the memory that's been pulled from his subconscious. "Dean did something. Some kind of spell with our blood."

Missouri's eyes widen and her hand falls away from him. "Blood magic?"

"He used the amulet as some kind of conduit."

"Amulet?"

"It was something Bobby gave me as a kid to give to my dad for Christmas. I gave it to Dean instead when Dad didn't come back. I'd found Dad's journal, realized he'd been lying to me, and Dean told me the truth about everything. He said they were just trying to protect me."

"And Dean knew about the nightmares?"

"Yeah. I used to get so scared I couldn't fall back asleep without him beside me." Sam thinks about all the years they'd shared a bed. And how sometimes, even after his own nightmares went away, Dean would crawl under the covers beside him, like he was seeking the same comfort he'd offered Sam. It didn't happen all that often and Dean wouldn't talk about it when it did. But Dean was sixteen and just started going on hunts with their dad. It wasn't that far of a stretch to think the nightmares Dean was having were caused by whatever he saw on those hunts. Then, as Sam got older, Dean stayed in his own bed, even through the dreams that woke them both with is hoarse, terrified cries, and Sam was forced to cross the short distance between them and do for Dean what he'd always done for Sam.

"Do you think he was still trying to protect you?" Missouri asks, interrupting Sam's reverie. "Taking the nightmares away?"

It sounds _exactly_ like something Dean would do. "But if the _demon_ gave me some kind of psychic power, how could Dean take it?"

"The spell he used must have been very old magic. Blood magic is one of the most powerful kinds of sorcery, but your bond, the conduit, Dean's intentions, those things would only make it stronger. Can you remember any of the spell?"

"No, but it sounded strange. Like Hebrew... or, maybe, Arabic."

"Something Egyptian or Coptic, maybe?"

"I don't know." Sam scratches at his forehead, the drying paste making his skin feel tight and itchy. "How will this help us find Dean?"

"You're brothers. You have the same blood. I can use that. Whatever spell he did will only have strengthened the bond between you and that should make it even easier to track him." She stands and runs a finger along the spines of the books on the shelf beside the couch.

"Missouri? If Dean took my psychic power, why did I dream about Jess?"

Missouri stops leafing through the pages of the book in her hands to look at Sam. "Dean wasn't meant for it – you were. It's likely stronger than he is. The conduit should help him control it, but the power is still _yours._"

It's not helpful and not really an answer. But if Missouri can find Dean, it doesn't really matter. So he stands by and watches as she cleans off the coffee table and lays out a large Rand McNally atlas open to a two-page spread of the U.S. map. The locating spell she uses is familiar, Latin. She holds her hand out for Sam's, pricks the tip of his finger with a pin and squeezes a drop of blood over Lawrence. The bead coagulates atop the paper instead of soaking into it, slowly sliding north to the juncture of interstates 29 and 90. Sioux Falls. "Bobby."

Missouri raises an eyebrow at him. "You know where he is?"

"I think so, yeah." He probably should've thought of it sooner, but he hasn't seen the man in _years._ Not since the day his regressed memory made him remember. But if Dean was trying to lay low, keep their father from finding him, Bobby's would be the perfect place to go. Sam's just curious as to what's got him _hiding._ He glances at his watch. If he leaves now, he could make it by eleven.

"You can leave first thing," Missouri says with a pointed look – it doesn't take her psychic abilities to guess what he's thinking. "I've already got a room made up for you and you look like you could use a good, home-cooked meal and a decent night's rest."

Sam can't exactly argue. He's been living off of cheap, greasy diner food and gas station coffee for longer than his body's used to. However, he doubts he'll rest easy until he finds his brother, motel or Missouri's guest room aside.

A storm front moves in overnight and Sam wakes to the sound of sleet pelting the window. Missouri sends him off with a quarter of the loaf of cinnamon bread and a full travel mug of coffee. "You ever need anything, don't hesitate to call," she says with sincerity, hand resting on Sam's wrist as he reaches for the door. "And good luck with Dean."

There's something in her voice that makes her words seem almost cryptic, like there's more Sam should know before finding his brother. But Missouri doesn't elaborate, just pats his arm and offers a smile. So Sam returns the smile – she may be vague, but he wouldn't have found Dean so quickly without her. "Thanks, Missouri."

She watches from the doorway as he climbs into his dad's truck and pulls away from the curb, waving before she disappears from sight. Within seconds, the house blurs into the neighborhood, becomes indistinguishable from the other white-vinyl-sided two-story suburban homes. Then, minutes later, he's exiting onto the highway, Lawrence on its way to once again becoming nothing more than a distant memory.

As the miles pass, Sam grows increasingly anxious. The open road gives him time to think, nothing but the odd thoughts sliding through his mind for companionship. He goes over the memory Missouri helped him recover, what Dean did for him and how it might be affecting him now. Sam wonders if that's what she was referring to in offering him luck. She'd told him that Dean wasn't meant to have the psychic ability the demon had given to Sam as a child. He's heard more than a few stories of people with a natural ability going crazy from the things they'd seen or heard. It's not a far stretch to think Dean could be going through something similar. From there, Sam's mind just goes into darker and darker places.

The sleet turns to snow by the time he crosses into Iowa, tiny, hard flakes that sound like sand against the windshield at seventy miles an hour. Within an hour, the weather has seriously deteriorated, the snow's falling heavy and wet and so fast that, even at forty with the wipers on high, visibility is no more than four or five car-lengths ahead of him. He's determined to make Sioux Falls by dark, and that's seeming less and less likely as the truck crawls along and the blizzard outside continues.

The drive takes almost three hours longer than it's supposed to and Sam turns off onto Bobby's lane just before six. The windows are mostly dark, two downstairs dimly lit through heavy drapes. The curtains on the larger window part in the middle, spilling a shaft of warm, golden light across the starkness of the freshly fallen snow. By the time Sam's out of the truck and headed for the front door, the porch light comes blazing to life in its frosted-glass globe. The storm door opens silently then Bobby's pushing the creaky screen door open with the toe of one boot while he levels the barrel of his shotgun out the gap. "Who's there?" he questions gruffly, eyes squinting into the darkness beyond the soft fall of the porch light.

"It's Sam Winchester," Sam tells him, hands raised in supplication as he starts up the stairs. "Is Dean here?"

Bobby lowers the shotgun, holds the screen door open with a shoulder as he gestures Sam inside. "No."

That doesn't make sense – this is where the tracking spell said he would be. "But he _was_?"

"Look, Dean made me promise not to call your daddy. He's going through something he wants to handle on his own and I'm helping him work on it."

"Work on what? What's he got himself into he couldn't tell Dad or me?"

"He's okay, Sam. He's _safe._"

"So you know where he is?" Sam asks, ignoring for a moment that Bobby's avoiding the question.

"Yeah."

"Well, I have to see him. I have to-"

"It's not a good idea, Sam. Not right now. He's- he's not really _himself._"

Sam shakes his head and just blurts it out. "Our dad's dead."

Bobby's face goes oddly blank at that, eyes narrowing just the slightest bit to belie his concern. "What?"

"Three days ago. We were tracking a wendigo and it got him. He was in the hospital for a while, but there was nothing anybody could do. He told me about the demon. I have to find Dean so I can tell him about Dad and so he can help me find the goddamn thing that killed our mother."

"Look, I'm really sorry 'bout your daddy. He- he was a good hunter and- and I know he was doing his best with you and Dean." Bobby shakes his head and sighs, rubbing a hand over his brow beneath the bill of his ever-present baseball cap. "But when I said Dean's not really himself, I meant it. You might want to sit and you're definitely gonna want a drink."

Sam follows Bobby into the library that looks virtually unchanged from his memory of the place. He sits in one of the chairs by the window, a familiar energy calming him as he settles against the padded backrest.

Bobby returns with a half-empty bottle of whiskey and two tumblers. He offers one of the short glasses to Sam and pours a good three fingers of amber liquid into it before filling up his own and sitting in the chair next to Sam's, separated by a narrow table covered with a mess of books.

"Dean?" Sam prompts, tension rising the longer Bobby draws this out.

"He called me a couple of weeks ago when he was working a job in New Orleans." He takes a healthy swig of whiskey before continuing. "He was having trouble remembering things. Basic things, about the job and- and _everything._" With a shrug he glances up at Sam. "He said it had been going on for a while but it was getting worse. He'd resorted to using post-it notes as reminders: where he was, where he was going, the job he was working on. I asked him if he'd ever told your dad and he said no. Then I asked if he ever told you..."

"And? What did he say? 'Cause he never told me a damn thing about it, either."

Bobby finishes off the alcohol in his glass, pours himself some more, and swallows that down, too. "He..."

"What, Bobby?" If Sam gets any tenser, he's going to crush the glass in his hand.

"He didn't _remember_ you. At all."

Sam takes a deep breath in an attempt to ease the ache in his chest, but it only seems to swell even more. The important thing is that Dean's _alive,_ and he tries to focus on that. "He's my brother – he's all I've got left."

**PART THREE - DEAN**

Dean pulls his pillow over his head when his alarm starts to go off. He knows he can't be certain, but he's pretty sure he hates the damned thing. The pillow barely muffles the annoying bleating so Dean shoves off his blankets and sits up, reaches over and slides the broken-off peg to the notch marked 'OFF' with his thumb nail. There are two sticky notes on the face of the alarm clock, lit up orange as the red LED lights of the numbers shine through the yellow paper. One says _Harvelle's Roadhouse – Kimball, NE – __new job__ work at 11._

The numbers beneath the notes say 9:35, so Dean turns on the lamp and takes his daily journal off the top of the stack of notebooks on his nightstand. The last entry is marked _November 15, 2005,_ and paging back though a few entries, he sees that he writes daily. That makes today the sixteenth.

Two weeks' worth of entries are all variations on the same thing. He wakes, writes down what he remembers of any nightmares or dreams he's had, goes back through previous entries. They all end the same: "_The drawings help me remember people, but I'm losing everything else. I'm getting worse."_

He closes the notebook and climbs out of bed, finds his duffel full of clean, floral-scented laundry – _folded_, no less – in the closet and pulls out a pair of jeans, a tee and a henley, and a pair of boxer-briefs before heading for the hall. He pauses in front of his gallery of sketches, smirking at his own notes on the curling edges of both portraits of the women he recognizes with certainty: _HANDS OFF!_

He goes through the vaguely familiar motions of showering and shaving, brushing his teeth and getting dressed. Dean looks at his face in the mirror every morning until he recognizes the stranger in his reflection – until the edge of panic he feels as he tries to remember who he is, where he is, fades to a dull, uncomfortable thing.

Curling post-its lining the edge of the medicine cabinet mirror above the sink serve as reminders and temporary place holders. "_I am Dean Winchester,_" he reads aloud from the one closest to his reflection. _I live in Kimball, Nebraska,_ says another.

It's a weird feeling to have – that he's not who he's supposed to be. Like his skin's a size too small, ill-fitting and itchy. Confining. Smothering. Like he's in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like he used to be somebody else and the memories of that other, better, previous life are just out of his mind's grasp, like a forgotten word right on the tip of his tongue. Whatever it is, it's _right there,_ so close he can almost taste it.

He returns to his room for a pair of socks and sits at the foot of his bed as he pulls them on. There's a sketch on the wall, separate from the others and unfinished. It's just a set of eyes, heavy bangs falling across the forehead, faint lines of graphite suggesting a nose and a jaw. The eyes are perfect, familiar, but everything below seems off. There's no name on the corner of this drawing so Dean has no idea who it is. He shrugs, stands, studies the rest until faces and names are familiar, and heads for the kitchen.

There's a battered pocket-sized notepad on the counter next to the coffee pot, pages fuzzing and the thin chipboard cover stained. He flips it open to the first clean page, marking it with his finger, and reads through the last few notes. _Ellen got a call from Bobby – he should be here on Friday, might have new info? Still not remembering anything - maybe there's a good reason. Maybe we should just leave it alone._ It's not very helpful _or_ very inspiring, but it's possible Bobby found something.

There's more, but nothing too enlightening. Just daily play-by-plays, what he's been doing, things he's heard. He skims more of his sloping scrawl and closes the oft-used notepad before shoving it into the back pocket of his jeans where his wallet should be.

He starts the coffeemaker with the aid of more post-it notes and leans against the counter as he waits for it to brew enough for a cup. He lets his mind drift back to that incomplete sketch and he feels a sudden spike of frustration that the rest of the face is blank. He wonders where his mind came up with the image, if it's something he's remembering or forgetting.

Dean drinks his coffee black because there's no post-it telling him otherwise, how much milk or sugar to add, and he likes it just fine even if he scalds his lips and the tip of his tongue on the first sip. He knows it's probably not the best coffee, but it's not thick as tar or strong as jet fuel, so he figures he's done something right. Just as he's preparing to pour his second cup, an alarm on the other side of the room blares to life. Dean finds a cell phone plugged into a charger on an end table next to the short couch. It's easy, thoughtless work to get the damn thing to quiet and he's struck, not for the first time since he woke up, with how strange it is that processes such as shaving and shutting off the stupid alarm on his cell phone are amazingly simple, yet he can't remember basic information like his name and where he is without prompts from three-inch square pieces of sticky, yellow paper. Surely whatever's wrong with him is some kind of freak anomaly.

A message pops up on the phone's screen moments later, accompanied by a tinkle of chimes and a buzz: _Time for work :)_ showing up across the screen. And Dean is as certain as he can possibly be that he didn't type that for himself.

After turning off the coffeemaker and dumping the leftovers down the drain, Dean heads for the door. There's a time- and weather-worn leather jacket hanging from a hook on the wall and a pair of muddy work boots on the mat beneath it. He sits on the edge of the chair behind him to pull on the boots and shrugs into the jacket, shoving the cell phone into his front jeans pocket as he stands.

He slips his hand into the front right pocket of his jacket and finds the keys he'd anticipated would be there. He wonders if, maybe, he's starting to remember, but reasons that shoving his hand into his pocket is probably just a habit. It doesn't really matter, he guesses. So he leaves the trailer and pulls the locked door shut behind himself. The morning is gray and cold, reflecting dully off the mirrored surface of the trailer and the snow on the ground is up to Dean's calves as he steps off the last stair. He makes his way down the hill and to the Roadhouse to start his day.

Dean takes all the chairs down off the tables, sets out full napkin dispensers and salt and pepper shakers. He checks the coolers behind the bar to see if anything needs to be brought up from the back, but everything looks well-stocked. Jo comes in while he's slicing up tomatoes and hops up onto the counter beside him. "Mom got a call from Bobby last night. He's coming early. Said he'll be here this afternoon."

"Yeah?" Dean scoops up the thin slices with his knife and carefully sets them into the empty Tupperware bowl.

"Uh huh."

He thinks about the note he read earlier this morning. "Does he have any new information?"

Jo shrugs, flips her blonde hair over her shoulder. "Mom didn't say. Don't know why he'd make the trip out if he didn't, though." She hops down and moves towards the fridge. After rifling around inside it for a couple of moments, she returns to Dean's side with an orange slice of American cheese, methodically breaking off the corners and popping them into her mouth.

Dean tries to ignore her stare but it's nearly impossible. She's barely two feet away, head tilted as she eats her cheese, big brown eyes locked on his face. "Did you need something?"

Jo shakes her head and grins. "Nope."

"Well, if you're gonna stand there, you might as well be useful – you can cut up a few onions while I finish up with these."

The request has the desired effect and Jo pushes away from the counter. "No thanks."

Ellen comes in around noon, a couple of the locals show up around one, and Dean tends bar while Ellen slaves over the grill. By three o'clock, a third of the tables and all the stools at the bar are full of hunters. Dean's digging through the cooler for a can of Sprite when he overhears Ellen talking to a man with his arm in a sling. He catches bits and pieces of the conversation, finds out that the man's name is Levi Sutton and that he just got done with a job tracking down a skinwalker in New Mexico. Dean knows that used to be him, based on what he reads every morning in his journal – before he forgot everything he knows, he was a hunter, and a good one at that. Part of him yearns for the road, the constant change of scenery, the life he knows he had but might never remember. But, unless Bobby arrives with good news, that's probably never going to happen and the only scenery Dean's ever going to see is what's outside the windows of the Roadhouse and his trailer.

He pulls the can of Sprite out from the back of the cooler where it's buried behind the Coke and takes it over to Pat O'Hare. The old man's glass eye kind of freaks Dean out a little and he pops open the top of the can and reaches for a glass, setting both before the man and heading for the end of the bar. "I'm taking my break," he calls to Ellen, already eying the card game going on in the dimmest corner of the bar. Twenty minutes is more than enough time to get in a few good hands. He pulls up an empty chair and slides in between a man in a Huskers baseball cap with a long, ginger beard and another guy with a thick, black Tom Selleck mustache. "Deal me in?"

Tom Selleck rolls his eyes and scoots over to give Dean more room. "Are we going to have to explain the rules again?" he asks, but the tone of his voice is colored with humor, not exasperation.

"Yeah, probably."

Huskers Cap rattles off the rules of the game, just basic poker, and the guy opposite Dean deals out the cards and cuts the deck in front of himself. They manage to get through four hands before Ellen's calling for him. Tom Selleck throws his cards down onto the table. "Every time, man. Don't know how you do it."

"Beginner's luck," Dean laughs as he pockets nearly all the cash from the pot he won and drops a twenty between Tom and Huskers. "Next round's on me."

"Get out of here," Tom Selleck says, waving Dean away but picking up the twenty and putting it back in the middle of the table.

Dean busies himself emptying food baskets and cleaning silverware for a while, scrawls his poker winnings into his notepad as well as the other bits of information he's gleaned from eavesdropping. He's at the sink, washing glasses, watching Ellen check the clock above the shelves of liquor for the third time in the past ten minutes and he's about to call her on it when the front door bursts open. Two men enter in a swirl of blowing snow, the first Dean recognizes as Bobby Singer from the sketch in his room. The second man, though – Dean's around the bar and has the man shoved up against the wall, his forearm pressed up against the man's throat, before he's even aware he moved, then Bobby and Tom Selleck are pulling him back.

It's _him._ The man from the unfinished sketch. Dean would recognize those eyes _anywhere._ "Who _are_ you?" he grits out

The man looks scared and maybe a little hurt. "It's me, Dean. It's-"

"Jo!" Ellen yells, moving in between Dean and the stranger before he can get out his name. She pushes Dean towards her daughter. "Go cool off," she tells him. "We'll talk when you calm down."

"What's going on?" He looks from Bobby to Ellen, the stranger, looks around at all the people in the bar that are now staring at him.

Jo grabs his arm. "Come on. Let's go."

Dean reluctantly follows, but only because of the stern look Ellen fixes him with. "Who is that guy?" Dean asks once they're outside, accepting the cigarette Jo offers him from the crumpled pack she digs out of the pocket of her coat.

Jo lights her own cigarette before handing the lighter off to Dean. She eyes him warily for a second. "You don't know?"

"Would I be asking if I did?"

"Why'd you react like that, then?"

"Because he...he looked familiar." That's not exactly true. Sure, the eyes he recognized from that unfinished sketch, but there's so much more to it than he himself can understand. He _felt_ something when their gazes met. Dean _knows_ him from somewhere. But how? There's only one place Dean can find the answers he's looking for. "Look, I'm gonna-" He gestures towards his trailer.

Jo nods. "Are you okay?"

"I need a post-it to remember my name and sketches to recognize people I see every day. What do you think?" Dean leaves her with that, unable to care that he was unnecessarily rude to her.

It doesn't seem to have fazed Jo any, judging by the affectionate "Asshole!" she calls after him.

Dean kicks off his boots inside the door and tosses his coat onto the chair before moving back to his bedroom. His gaze automatically lands on that damned unfinished sketch and he can feel the weight of its graphite stare. Ignoring the impulse to tear the drawing down, Dean sits heavily on the edge of his mattress and pulls the stack of notebooks into his lap. He's not sure what he's looking for – it's not like he has a name or a date to guide him. But he thinks he finds his answer a half-dozen pages into the dream journal. There are a handful of dates written in the margin and Dean knows it's the other nights he had this same dream. It details desperate but gentle sex – tentative hands, warm mouth, hard body – slow with love, frantic with need.

The stranger is – or was – his lover, maybe something more. But he seems older now. Dean wonders how long it's been since they've seen each other, if he knows what happened to Dean to make him this way.

He's rereading the entry for a third time when there's a knock on the front door. Setting the journal aside, Dean stands and heads down the hallway. It could be anybody. Except, it's the last person he expects.

The stranger – the literal guy of his dreams, the good ones, anyway – is standing on his stairs, hands shoved into his pockets. "Hey," he says when Dean opens the door.

"Hi." Dean doesn't move from the doorway.

"I'm Sam. Can I come in?"

"Sam _what_?"

Sam shakes his head and moves up a step so he's eye to eye with Dean. "Winchester."

_Married?_ Dean wonders. _Is that even legal?_ He backs away from the door. "So, you're...?"

Sam pushes the door closed and turns to face Dean. "I'm your brother."

But, the _dreams._ "You're _what?_"

"I know. Bobby said you'd forgotten."

"That's- But- _Shit_, I need a drink." He pulls two bottles of beer from the fridge and offers one to Sam after he's pried the lids off with his ring. "Brothers?"

Sam licks his lips and takes the bottle that's held out to him. "Who did you think I was?"

Dean shakes his head and crosses the short distance to the couch. "I'm not- I don't know. I have this... dream."

Sam sits in the chair across from him and Dean feels kind of caged in with the way he's blocking the only exit. "Dream?" Sam prompts, looking at Dean intently.

He nods, takes a swig of beer, doesn't know how much he should give away because it's entirely possible that the dream was based more in fantasy than reality even if it never felt like it was false. "Yeah. You're in it."

Sam leans forward a little more in the chair at that. "What happened in this dream that makes you think were weren't brothers?" His eyebrows draw up like he's fishing for an answer he already knows.

Dean looks away from that earnest stare.

"The last time I saw you was over four years ago, Dean. I'd just graduated and I was going to be leaving for college. I didn't want to go, but you insisted – didn't want me to have the same life you and Dad did. You said you wanted me to have a choice, but you're the one that made the decision for me. I hated that you were sending me away and we had a pretty bad argument." Sam pauses long enough to get up from the chair and move over to the couch, leaving half a cushion of space between himself and Dean. "But then you had a nightmare – you were having so many nightmares back then – and I couldn't help myself.

"It had been building up for a long time, I think. I mean, I don't remember ever _not_ wanting you. But you'd push me away, tell me we couldn't...But that night, I think you just needed me as much as I needed you." He shifts closer. "I kissed you and you let me and it was perfect, then we... I thought for sure you wouldn't make me leave after that." Sam gives this little mirthless laugh. "Should've known it was your goodbye."

"But we're _brothers._ Why would we...? And why can't I remember anything?"

Sam sets his beer on the coffee table and reaches his hand out to Dean, fingertips chilled and damp from the bottle caressing Dean's cheek. "I don't know, Dean. I'm sorry. I just know that I miss you. _God,_ I miss you."

Dean can't deny what that hesitant touch makes him feel, how his body reacts to it like it's something he's known his whole life. "Sam."

Then Sam's closing the distance between them, crushing his mouth to Dean's frantically before backing off to kiss him slow and gentle. "I was afraid I'd never see you again."

As much as Dean doesn't want to stop, he knows they can't do this. Not now, maybe not ever again. He gets his hands up between them, pushes against Sam's chest until his brother – God_damn_, his _brother_ - sits back. "I'm sorry," he murmurs, letting his forehead fall against Sam's shoulder.

Sam's nodding when Dean straightens back up. "Yeah. No, it's okay." But the happiness in his eyes has dimmed and his expression is shuttered, mouth tense with a forced smile.

"I'm sorry," Dean repeats. "I know this can't be easy for you, but I just don't..."

"You don't remember me. At all. I know. And all this," he says, waving a hand between them. "You... I get it. I hate it, but I understand. And it's not your fault. But I promise you, Dean, I'll do anything, whatever it takes, to get your memory back. To make you remember who we are and what we were. I've lost too much. _We've_ lost too much."

Sam's desperation is palpable and Dean wishes there was something he could do to ease the obvious hopelessness his brother is feeling. But he doesn't think he can give Sam what he wants and he can't think of anything to say that'll make any of it better. "I just... We just need some time," he finally says.

Sam nods again, shifts further away on the couch until there's half a foot of space between them. "I should go," he says, briefly catching Dean's gaze before standing.

Dean stands as well, awkwardly follows Sam to the door, stops his brother on the stairs with a hand on the sleeve of his coat. "We just need time," Dean repeats once Sam's looking up at him. He presses a kiss to Sam's frowning mouth, lets the fingers of the hand not holding onto Sam's jacket skim across the warm skin of his cheek. Little flashes of memory come back to Dean as his fingers tangle in Sam's hair.

_His hair is shorter, a little sweaty at the nape from spending half the afternoon on the high school's side lawn as the vice principal read off the names of the graduating senior class and students crossed the stage to gather their diplomas and shake the hands of the principal and the superintendent. Sam's name was third to last to be called and Dean had hooted and hollered from his seat four rows back from the end of the stage. And the grin Sam had given him, huge dimples on display – he'd never forget it._

But Sam isn't smiling as he pulls away, gently brushing off Dean's hands. "Have a- have a goodnight, Dean."

He watches Sam walk away, wondering how he'd managed to forget. That smile. _Sam._ But that's not really true. There's an unfinished sketch of Sam taped to the wall in his room. The sketch, the recurring dream – they're memories of Sam, not forgotten at all.

Dean closes and locks the door when he sees Sam disappear back inside the Roadhouse. He returns to his room, ignoring the half-empty beer bottles on his coffee table in favor of sitting at the end of his bed and staring at the drawing for a long stretch of moments before pulling it down and quickly finishing it. The Sam in his mind's eye is wearing a disappointed scowl, heartbreak evident in his eyes, and Dean hates how it translates to the paper. Sam should never look that sad.

He sticks the sketch back up on the wall and closes his eyes against the sight, trying to remember the way Sam looked when he was happy, but all he can conjure up is that little flare of memory from Sam's graduation. He focuses on it, the smell of fresh-cut grass, the heat of Sam's skin from the sun. But that's not the memory he sinks back into.

_Sam's curled around him and he smells like stale sweat and fresh air. "It's okay," Sam says against his throat, "you're okay." And parts of the nightmare surface, twisted, broken bodies and the flickering spirit of an angry, vengeful man. Sam holds him close and Dean knows this won't last. It can't. He brings his arms up around his brother, shifts until they're face to face, leans in and lets Sam kiss him._

Sam kicks out of his boxers and lays back on Dean's bed, legs bent at the knee and splayed wide, asking with his body what he's too afraid to ask aloud. Dean kicks out of his own sweats and underwear, settles himself over Sam, kisses him slow. Tonight is all they have.

Sam sucks on his own fingers until they're dripping with spit and reaches down between their bodies. Dean watches, transfixed, as Sam works himself open, one finger, two, then three. Dean can't help but press one of his own fingers in there along with Sam's and it makes his brother cry out. "I'm ready," Sam pants, grasping at Dean's shoulders, his hips. "I need you."

Then Sam's head is on his chest, an arm and a leg flung protectively over Dean as if Sam's afraid he might disappear in the night. Dean holds him as long as he can because when he lets go, it's for good.

Dean falls back on his mattress feeling years'-old loss hitting him head on, wondering if this is anything like what Sam felt when he realized Dean didn't remember him. Part of him wants nothing more than to run to his brother, tell him what he's uncovered, tell Sam that he loves him and that he's sorry, but Dean doesn't know what he's going to remember in the morning. He can't take the chance of disappointing Sam again.

Instead, he curls up on his bed and pulls out his daily journal, debating for a moment if he should leave anything out. In the end, he details his uneventful morning, then how he met Sam, how he recognized his brother's eyes from the sketch on his wall. He leaves out the dream and certain parts of his recovered memory, and sums up their relationship as 'closer than brothers.'

He closes his journal, turns off his light, and holds tight to the memory of Sam's mouth against his, wishing for dreams of his brother.


	5. Part Four

**PART FOUR - SAM**

Sam parks himself on one of the stools at the bar in front of the worn, wooden tap pulls, catching Ellen's eye and waiting for her to make her way over to him. "What're you drinkin', kid?"

"Whatever's on tap is fine," Sam exhales, pressing his fingers against the closed lids of his eyes. Bobby had warned him what to expect, but knowing that Dean has amnesia – and just how bad it is – is completely different than _experiencing_ it. Dean's reaction to the sight of him was a shock, and either something shows on his face or Ellen can read minds, because she slides a frothy mug of beer across the scarred surface of the bar and eyes him with a knowing look.

"It's not as bad as you think. And it could be a lot worse."

Sam scoffs because he just doesn't quite see how that could be possible. His brother has no memory that he ever existed. The only thing worse than that, the one thing that could make Sam feel even more wrecked and hurt, would be if... But Sam can't think of Dean as _dead._ It makes him picture his father's pyre burning bright against the blackness of an early-winter, Colorado night. He's not in the mood to argue with Ellen, so he takes a long drink from his glass and mutters, "I guess."

"Bobby told me about your dad. John and I, well... He did the best he could by you boys. I was sorry to hear of his passing."

"Thanks." Sam drags his fingertips through the gathering condensation on the outside of the glass. "Bobby tell you anything else?"

"Just that you might've learned something about Dean."

Sam nods, starts at the beginning. "When Dad... As my dad was dying, he told me that the demon – the demon that killed my mother – did something to me, too." He carefully watches Ellen's face for her reaction, but she gives nothing away. "It gave me a psychic ability, Ellen. Premonitions. I had nightmares all the time – bad ones. Then I had a vision one afternoon. We were at Bobby's while Dad was gone on a hunt with Bill."

Ellen's mask slips the tiniest bit as she meets and holds Sam's gaze, her dark eyes widening, lips pressed together in a pale line. "Bill, my husband?"

"Yeah. I saw what happened _before_ it happened, right in the middle of dinner. But I was twelve and... I don't know. I didn't remember it at all. Not until Dad was dying and sent me to a psychic he knew in Lawrence. Missouri Moseley. She helped me remember. Helped me find Dean." He pauses again to take another drink of his beer. "Dean did something, some kind of blood magic, to take my psychic ability or whatever away. But he's not strong enough for the power the demon gave me and Missouri thinks- _I_ think that's what's wrong with him."

"Your father knew about this?"

"No. Not about what Dean did. Nobody knew that. But he knew what the demon did to _me_, suspected what it _gave_ me. And I didn't know about Dean until Missouri showed me and Bobby told me about his... amnesia. Dean started having nightmares after mine went away and I should've _known._" He finishes off the rest of the beer in his glass in one big swallow, wishes he'd had something stronger. "I think the only way to save him is to find the demon and kill it."

"How are you gonna do that, Sam?"

"When Dad told me what the demon did, he told me that he'd been working on a way to track it. All his work's in his journal. I just... I was waiting to find Dean to look at it, so we could go after it together, but I-"

"That boy's in no condition to hunt."

"We need to do this together. Dad said-"

"I don't give a _damn_ what John Winchester said. Dean isn't fit for the job. Not now and, hell, maybe never. He's finally... _stable._ He's got his routine and his sketches and his journals, and he's doing so _well._ I'm not gonna let you disrupt that because John said you need to track this demon down together. Brother or not, he's in no shape for a simple salt and burn, much less hunting down a demon that's powerful enough to give you some kind of psychic powers. Don't you understand that, Sam? It's too dangerous."

Ellen's outburst is a shock, to say the least. Her protectiveness of Dean is endearing and Sam's glad his brother has someone like Ellen looking out for him. He nods in agreement. "I know. It wouldn't be safe for him."

"So what are you gonna do?"

Sam shrugs. "Track it myself, I guess. Dad did- or _tried_ to for twenty years."

"Look," Ellen sighs wearily, "I've got a friend here that I think can help. Just get me everything John's got on the demon and I'll get him started on it."

Sam nods again and stands from his seat. He's already trusted Ellen with a lot – maybe too much. But she's been looking after Dean, been taking care of him when Sam couldn't, and she seems willing enough to help in whatever way she can. He goes outside to retrieve his bag from Bobby's truck, digs John's journal out of it before setting the thick, leather-bound book on the counter, a rumpled manila envelope wedged between the last page and the back cover. "That's everything I've got."

Ellen rests her hand atop the discolored cover for a moment before pulling it across the pocked surface of the bar. "We'll find something." She takes the journal in hand, carries it under her arm, nods her head towards the doorway in the dim corner at the opposite end of the bar. "Come on. I'll show you to your room."

The sun's just risen over the horizon, painting the world in a muted gray as it attempts to penetrate the snow-leaden clouds that drift slowly across the sky, when Sam wakes. He skips showering and shaving, just redresses in his small room and heads back out to the empty bar. He settles himself on a stool at the counter and waits. He's not sure how much time passes before the back door slams open, Ellen entering with a gust of frigid air and a swirl of snow. She stalls in her tracks at the sight of Sam. "You're up awfully early."

"Couldn't sleep," Sam yawns. "That cot was about a foot too short and lumpy as hell."

Ellen shrugs as she takes off her coat. "Don't get enough visitors staying over to upgrade. You want breakfast?"

"Yes, please."

"Coffee?"

"Absolutely."

Ellen's got a full mug of steaming coffee and a heaping plate of eggs, sausage, and toast in front of Sam in no time. He's halfway through his second helping when there's a bang and the sound of running from the hall where the spare rooms are. A man not much older than Sam himself comes barreling through the door in a wrinkled tee and jeans, blonde hair flying wildly around his face. "I got something!" He strides over to Sam and slaps a sheet of paper down onto the counter next to Sam's plate. "That journal you gave me was _insane,_ man. And the research on the tracking?" The man grins almost manically.

"What've you got, Ash?" Ellen asks without so much as a blink, like this is normal behavior for the man.

"I'm still running the program, but I found a kid whose mother died in a nursery fire and all the omens from the livestock mutilations to the lightning storms were all there." Ash glances from Ellen to Sam and back, then back again. "So what are we looking for?"

Sam sets his fork down. "A demon."

"A _what?_"

"A demon," Sam repeats. "It's what killed that kid's mother in his nursery. It's what happened to _my_ mom. My dad's been trying to track it for _years._"

"Oh, he wasn't _trying._ He'd figured out its pattern."

"So what was he waiting for if he knew how to find it?"

Ash shrugs, snags a piece of sausage from Sam's plate. "Omens stopped popping up. The thing's gone underground." He smiles, pleased with his own pun.

"But I need to find it."

"Good luck with that, hermano," Ash says around a mouthful of meat, reaching for a piece of toast.

"I might have a contact that can help you with that, Sam," Bobby says as he tugs his cap onto his head. Sam didn't hear or see him come in, too focused on Ash. He takes the stool to Sam's right and nods. "I'll give her a call from home when we get back."

Sam reads over the sheet Ash gave him as Bobby eats a quick breakfast. Max Miller is a couple weeks younger than Sam and he lives in Michigan. It'll be a full day's drive after he gets back to South Dakota with Bobby. He'll have to wait until morning and he's not going to have time to come all the way back to Kimball with the Impala before he goes. Dean's not going anywhere.

With his mind made up, Sam turns to Bobby. "How long before we head out?"

Bobby glances at the clock above the bar. "Half an hour, forty-five minutes?"

Sam nods, climbs off his stool as he thanks Ellen for breakfast.

"Try not to stay away too long, Sam," Ellen says as he goes. "It's not good for Dean's memory."

Sam has no intention of letting Dean forget him again. He should be back in a few days if all goes well. He returns to his borrowed room for his bag, drops it off at Bobby's truck before rounding the side of the Roadhouse and finding the faint trail in the snow that leads up the hill. He wonders what Dean will remember as he makes his way across the field to the trailer.

Sam's first series of knocks on the frame of Dean's door goes unanswered. Dean could be asleep or in the shower or, for all Sam knows, avoiding the strange man on his doorstep. But Sam's nothing if not persistent, especially when it comes to his brother, so he knocks again and again. 'A Shave and a Haircut' and the bass-line to 'Kashmir.' Eventually, he hears movement inside, then Dean's throwing the door open, nearly knocking Sam off the stairs. "What?"

Sam just stares up at his brother, takes in the sight of him in wrinkled sweats and a threadbare tee, the sleepy-angry expression on his face, and the way half of his hair is flattened against the side of his head. "Good morning," he offers.

Dean's glare gets a little more pinched and his grunt sounds like a tired-Dean equivalent of 'fuck you.'

Grinning, Sam moves up a couple of steps, leans against the open door. "You remember me from yesterday?"

The expression on Dean's face softens into a thoughtful look as he eyes Sam curiously. He's quiet for a long time before nodding. "You came in with Bobby, right?"

Sam nods back. "But do you remember _who_ I am?"

"It's too goddamn early for Twenty Questions." Dean steps back from the door and disappears down the hallway to the left.

Sam enters the trailer and pulls the door closed, stands in the living room, unsure if he's supposed to be following. Through the doorway at the end of the short hall, he can see Dean standing at the end of his bed, staring at the wall. Curiosity piques Sam's interest and he wanders after Dean, pausing just inside the door to stare at the collage of portraits taped to the faux-wood paneling. They're done in pencil, in varying degrees of detail, and Sam recognizes Ellen and Bobby, some others vaguely familiar. There's a sketch of himself on the far right apart from the rest, and that's the drawing that holds Dean's attention.

"Sam," Dean says, tapping the sketch. He lifts the corner, scans the back of the paper before glancing over at Sam. "You're my brother?"

Sam nods. "You don't remember?"

Dean takes a deep breath, slowly shakes his head. "No, but... it doesn't feel like a... surprise?" He shrugs.

"That's okay," Sam tells him, almost believing himself. "Look, me and Bobby are gonna go back to his place – he's got your car there and maybe some more of your journals. I'm gonna bring 'em back as soon as I can."

"You're leaving? Already?" Dean's forehead wrinkles with the question like he doesn't understand. And he probably doesn't. And Sam can't explain because, _'I'm sorry, but I've gotta go track down this kid in Michigan who might have supernatural powers given to him by a demon that killed his mother when he was a baby and he might lead me to the demon that did the same thing to me so I can kill it and save you from losing your mind completely,'_ might make Sam sound crazy.

"Yeah," Sam says instead.

"Oh." Dean's shoulders slump and he pushes past Sam out the doorway. He stalls almost immediately, only a foot or two away. "Dude, seriously?" he says, turning on Sam and socking him in the arm. "You tracked snow through the whole goddamn place."

Sam looks down at his wet boots and Dean's bare feet. "Sorry."

"Whatever, bitch."

Sam stops in his tracks and reaches for Dean's wrist. "What did you call me?"

In the dim light of the living room, Dean looks confused. "I don't know. What did I call you?"

"You called me 'bitch.'"

"I'm sorry?"

Dean doesn't understand the significance of the jab, but it makes Sam wonder. Between the dream and the sketch and _this,_ maybe Dean hasn't forgotten everything. Maybe it's all still there, just hidden. That means there's a chance Dean'll get better. That means there's still hope that, once Sam finds and kills the demon, Dean will remember everything about Sam and what they were to each other before he was forced to leave for school. "No," he says. "Don't apologize. It's fine. Better than."

Dean looks skeptical. "Okay."

"I'll be back soon, all right? A few days, tops. Just... try not to forget me."

"Okay," Dean says again, slowly.

"I've gotta go. I'll be back before you know it." Impulsively, he ducks down and captures Dean's mouth in a brief, chaste kiss. "I'll see you." Sam backs away, holding Dean's stunned stare, gives his brother a wave, and lets himself out. He's barely twenty feet away from the trailer when the door slams open.

Dean's standing there, eyes wide, face flushed. "What the hell was _that_?"

Sam laughs aloud at Dean's indignant outrage. "I'll see you," he repeats, then turns his back on Dean, returning to the Roadhouse where Bobby's waiting on him to leave.

Sam wastes no time unpacking, just drops his bags at the bottom of the staircase as soon as he and Bobby are inside the older hunter's home. "Hold your horses," Bobby mutters at him with a shake of his head as he sets his own bag down in the library before leading Sam through the house and out the back door in the kitchen.

The Impala is covered with a heavy canvas tarp, a thin layer of dirt and dust covering the whole thing, but paint is as shiny as ever beneath it. Sam pulls the tarp off completely, folds it up and shoves it into an empty space on the shelves along the back of the shed. Bobby tosses him the keys and he unlocks the door, climbs inside. She grumbles sullenly before turning over with a smooth purr. Sam can't help patting the dash affectionately as Dean would, praising the car, "That's a good girl," like she's a favored pet dog.

Bobby holds the shed door open against the sharp wind that's begun gusting out of the north and Sam pulls out into the yard and up to the house. He pops the trunk and lets her run for a while, exits the car and moves around back to search for Dean's old journals or anything else of interest.

The weapons in the trunk are in a sorry state, knives dull, guns a few uses past a good cleaning. But, shoved into the corner above the passenger side wheel well, there's a raggedy backpack wedged behind a couple gallon jugs of holy water. It's an old JanSport bag, the black of the canvas faded to the point it's nearly gray, the leather bottom brittle and cracking. Sam lifts it out carefully, sets it atop a half-empty bag of rock salt. Inside, there's a dozen or so spiral notebooks, dates scrawled in Dean's handwriting across the top. They go as far back as 1995 and Sam knows why. He zips the bag back up, slings one of the straps over his shoulder, and turns off the car.

Bobby's sitting at the table in the kitchen with a mug of coffee and the cordless phone in front of him when Sam comes in. "Find what you were looking for?" he asks, reaching for his mug.

"Maybe," Sam says, pushing the door closed tight against the cold.

"I called that contact of mine. She's in Platteville, Wisconsin, so she's kind of on your way out to Michigan."

"But I was-"

"She's expecting you tomorrow afternoon," Bobby interrupts before Sam can finish his protest.

"All we've got to go on is what it did, what it can do. Is that gonna be enough for her to find out which demon it is?"

"Elaine is one of the best demonologists that I know – if she can't help you, I don't know anyone that can."

Sam glances at the clock on the wall. "If I leave now, I'll get there before morning."

"There's another storm moving in," Bobby says with a stern look. "Head out at first light." He holds a folded scrap of paper out to Sam.

Sam pockets the scrap and nods, retrieves his bags from the foyer and heads upstairs. He's got a couple hours to go through Dean's notebooks before bed.

But Sam must be more tired than he'd thought because, somewhere in the middle of the first journal, he falls asleep sitting up, waking with a stiff neck and no recollection of what he'd read the night before. He yawns and stretches, tries to work the kink out of his neck, before giving up and returning Dean's notebook to the backpack. He doesn't bother redressing, just gathers his things and heads back downstairs.

Bobby's already got a pot of coffee brewed, offers Sam a travel mug when he enters the kitchen. "I'll see you in a couple of days."

"Of course. And I'll call you right away if she gives me anything to go on. Maybe you can start looking up summoning rituals."

Bobby looks none too pleased but gives Sam another short nod. "Sure thing, son. Be careful."

Elaine Preston lives on a large plot of land on Southwest Road just off Highway 151 outside the small college town of Platteville. Sam's been through this part of Wisconsin a handful of times, but never in the winter. It's all rolling white hills and dairy farms and everything looks the same, especially in the scant sunlight. He finally pulls into Elaine's snow-drifted lane a couple hours later than expected, the dark, snow-heavy clouds making the early afternoon seem like twilight. But every window in the downstairs of her house is lit brightly, so Sam knows she hasn't given up on him quite yet.

One of the thin, gauzy curtains in the wide picture window at the front of the house is pushed aside at the sound of the Impala's engine as Sam drives up behind the mid-90s Taurus parked beneath a two-vehicle carport. Elaine's waiting for him at the front door as he approaches it and she gestures him inside. "Shoes," she says, pointing at the rug and her small pair of snow boots situated squarely in the corner.

Sam kicks out of his boots, gives each leg a shake to rid the hems of his jeans of any excess snow he's carrying before it can melt all over her floor like it did at Dean's. "I'm Sam Winchester," he says, offering his hand.

Elaine accepts it, her tiny hand dwarfed by his palm. "Bobby spoke well of you and you look like a good boy." She gives his face a long, hard look and nods to herself before leading him down a short hall and into a sitting room with one whole wall lined with books from floor to ceiling. "He said you're trying to find information on a demon?"

"Yes, ma'am." Sam watches Elaine, who's got to be at least a decade, if not two, older than Bobby, round the low couch to the wall of books. She glances back at Sam with a small smile.

"And you're a _polite_ young man, too." She nods again to herself. "So. What does this demon look like? What do you know about it?"

"All I really know is that it came into my nursery when I was six months old – it killed my mother and, according to my father, may have given me some kind of psychic power. It's happened to others. I'm actually on my way to find another guy like me."

Elaine hums, head bobbing as her fingers trail over the spines of the books. "I've heard of something like this happening before, back in the fifties. There was a demon traveling across the states, trying to find a special child."

"For what?"

"To lead an army," Elaine says, selecting a thick book with a cracked leather spine and turning back towards Sam. "Please, sit." She gestures to the low couch with the book in her hands and settles herself next to Sam. Opening the book on her lap, she starts flipping through the thin, yellowed pages, stopping just fifty or so in, tapping at the image on the paper. The demon looks like a man except for his bright yellow eyes, the ink somehow still standing out against the oxidated page. "This is Azazel. He is one of the Kings of Hell, ruling under Lucifer's command. He was charged with finding a special child to help release Lucifer from his prison and lead an army of demons in a war across the Earth."

"Are you saying that- that _that_'s what he did to _me_?"

Elaine nods and pushes the book into Sam's lap. "He chooses twenty children overall, from varying bloodlines, and only the strongest child is allowed to live. How that's determined, only those children and Azazel know."

"What happened in the fifties? You said this happened before."

"The nursery fires, yes. What became of the children, no one knows." She closes the book and pulls it back onto her thighs. "So, you have the demon's name. Is there anything else I can help you with?"

Sam shakes his head. "No. That's all I needed. Thank you so much, Mrs. Preston."

"Why are you so interested in this particular demon, Sam?"

"Like I said," Sam starts, standing from the low couch with a protest from his knees, "it killed my mother. Now, there's something wrong with my brother because of it."

Elaine looks up at him curiously. "What could be wrong with your brother? I thought you said the demon did something to _you_?"

"It did. But my brother did something to take my power away. He's... sick. The only way to make him better is to find this demon – Azazel – and kill it."

The frail woman is instantly on her feet, heavy book dropping onto the carpet with a muffled thud. Her hazy blue eyes flash a dull black in the split second before she throws her head back and a dark cloud erupts from her mouth. Elaine crumples to the floor bonelessly and Sam only gives the woman a moment's thought, checking for her pulse and that she's breathing before he's fishing his phone out of his pocket to call Bobby.

Elaine slowly starts to come to as Sam is relaying to Bobby what just happened. "You need to get back here, _now_," Bobby tells him before hanging up, the urgency in his voice ratcheting Sam's worry up another notch. The demons know what he's planning to do – he's in danger. _Dean_'s in danger.

"What happened?" Elaine asks, a hand pressed to the side of her head as she lifts herself onto the couch.

"You were possessed by a demon," Sam says slowly.

Her revulsion is evident in her face, in the wrinkle of her nose and the curl of her lip. She shakes her head. "Filthy creatures," she spits like a curse, then glances back up at Sam, eyes still troubled. "You best get going. It's only a matter of time before that demon passes on what it's learned and you find yourself in danger." Her gaze clears, eyes widening with alarm. "Your brother! You must go now!"

The panic on the old woman's face underscores Bobby's insistence and Sam's out of the room and down the hall before he's even thought to move. He shoves his feet into his boots and doesn't even bother with the laces, then he's running through the snow and climbing into the Impala, tearing out of the snowy lane and barreling west down the windswept highway.

**PART FOUR - DEAN**

Sam's parting kiss stays with Dean all day. He's got more questions than his journals can answer and he's pretty certain Sam's the only one who can. Sam, his brother, who kissed him on the mouth.

It leaves him on edge as he goes about his day, taking orders, wiping down tables, going a few rounds in Big Buck Hunter with Jo until she takes what little he's made in tips. It's a long day and Dean feels anxious, wants to do nothing more than go back to his trailer and wait for Sam to return as he promised.

Ellen cuts him and Jo loose early – there's another front starting to move in and it's unlikely they're going to have a sudden rush of customers after nine on a Thursday. Dean pulls on his coat and offers Ellen a salute as he heads out the back door. The snow between the back of the Roadhouse and the storage shed is all stomped flat, but beyond that, he can easily see the path that leads up to the trailer. The snow from last night has drifted over it in some places and the coming storm will erase it completely if the weather reports are anything to go by. The field is like Dean's mind, the trail cutting through the snow is Sam, and the encroaching snowstorm is whatever happens in Dean's head when he closes his eyes. Only a few short hours of exposure to the elements and any trace of the path will be obliterated and forgotten. It's a depressing thought.

Dean climbs the hill and lets himself into his trailer, kicks out of his boots, hangs up his coat, and sets his keys and his phone on the table before shuffling into the kitchenette to start a pot of coffee. He walks back to his room and stares at the sketch of Sam as he strips down to his boxers. After he pulls on a pair of sweats and a t-shirt, he heads back down the hall to retrieve a cup of coffee before returning to his room and settling against his headboard to fill out his daily journal.

He starts with Sam, how his brother woke him with his incessant knocking and kissed him goodbye. He details his unease, notes his anxiety for Sam's return. It's more than just hoping for answers, but he can't explain why.

Dean sets aside his journal and finishes his cup of coffee while looking at the sketch of Sam that hangs on his wall. Just a couple of days and Sam will be back, with him. Right where he belongs.

When the dream starts, Dean's not actually certain he's still sleeping. It's as vivid as a few of his nightmares have been lately, real enough that he can smell the neighbor's freshly mowed lawn and feel the heat of the sunlight streaming in through the open window seeping into his black tee. This is the day Sam left. Dean had dropped him off at the bus station after he'd had it out with Dad, held Sam at arms-length when Sam tried to lean in and kiss him as they said their goodbyes inside the car. He'd returned, alone, to an empty house feeling like an absolute asshole for making Sam go. But it was for the best. For Sam.

But Dean's not alone. There's a man sitting on the couch, legs crossed casually with an ankle resting atop his knee. When he looks up at Dean, his eyes are yellow. "Well, well. _What_ do we have here? You're not Sammy."

Dean's hackles rise at the man's stare. "He's gone. And he's not coming back."

"Mm," he agrees with a nod after a long moment of silence. "But it _is_ your fault. You drove him away."

"I'm trying to save him."

"Save him from what? Me or you?"

Dean's pretty sure this isn't how this particular day is supposed to go. "What?"

"You can't protect him forever, Dean. I'll find him." The yellow-eyed man stands and stares up at Dean. "I'll be seein' you soon, kid." Then he disappears.

Dean wakes with a start, a strange chill racing down his spine. That was new. He knocks the lampshade askew in his haste to turn on the lamp and write down the bizarre, hijacked memory in his journal. _Who is the yellow-eyed man and why is he looking for Sam?_

He leaves a post-it for himself on the front cover of the notebook to ask Sam about it when he comes back and turns off the lamp before rolling over and tucking his face against the cool side of his pillow.

Dean has similar dreams throughout the night that interrupt his sleep. And every time, the yellow-eyed man warns him, "You can't protect him forever, Dean. I'll find him."

Dean wakes with his alarm, dead tired and wanting nothing more than to roll back over and bury his head under his pillow. The unease from the previous day comes back full-force in the light of his unsettling dreams and it makes his stomach turn. Something is wrong.

As he slowly dresses, he wonders if he should tell Ellen about the almost-nightmares and the yellow-eyed man. But he knows what she'll say – the same thing she always tells him when he tries talking to her about his dreams: _write them down._ That's the only advice she can give him. It's not like his nightmares can be useful anyway.

Dean brews a full pot of coffee and drinks every last drop in the hope that the caffeine will keep his bone-weariness at bay. All it really serves to do, though, is keep him warm on his trek down the hill to the Roadhouse. He opens the back door with the red-coded key on the fob in his pocket. The inside of the bar is as silent as the open field surrounding it and, while that would normally be a kind of blessing, with the way Dean's feeling this morning it only makes the fine hairs along the back of his exposed neck rise and a chill run down his spine.

He feels, again, that something's off. Feels like he's... being _watched._ Dean does his best to shrug off the feeling and sets the jukebox to playing _Zep IV_. He pulls off his jacket and takes the chairs down from the tables, moves into the kitchen for his daily preparations. Tomatoes and onions are sliced, ground beef is formed into patties and placed between layers of waxed paper before going into the freezer, then ketchup and mustard levels are checked and filled.

Just after noon, the back door slams open, Ellen and Jo's voices carried on a frigid blast of air to where Dean's behind the bar stocking the coolers. With the way the snow's coming down, though, he highly doubts there's going to be a flood of customers coming in right this very moment, all wanting a Coke.

"Seriously?" Jo asks with a huff, coming into the bar proper, dusting snow off her jacket before hanging it up on its hook. "It's like all Zeppelin all the time with you." She crosses the time-darkened floor to the jukebox and pushes a couple buttons until Kevin Cronin is wailing out an REO Speedwagon power ballad.

Dean groans as he slides the cooler lid closed. "Really?"

Jo glances over her shoulder at him, still bracing herself against the jukebox with both arms. "Hey, I can play some Bon Jovi if you'd rather."

The tone of Jo's voice makes it sound like a threat. "REO Speedwagon it is."

Jo grins at him smugly. "Knew you'd see it my way."

"Like I had much choice," Dean grouses at her when she slides onto a stool opposite him.

"It's gonna be a _long_ day," she sighs, glancing out one of the frosted-over side windows.

Dean can only imagine. There's not much to keep them busy if they have few to no customers. He can only stock or restock so much. And without customers to leave him tips, he can't challenge Jo to Big Buck Hunter or a game of cards. All they can do is sit and wait and hope.

But sitting and waiting and hoping proves to be nearly futile as the place remains empty, save for employees, nearly all afternoon. At four-thirty, however, headlights cut wildly across the front windows as a small sedan bounces down the drifted-over driveway. The car slides to a stop near the front door, which creaks open ominously a minute or two later. The man that enters huddles in the doorway, taking in the Roadhouse's atmosphere with something like uncertainty, eyes darting to every corner and scanning the ceiling.

"Welcome to Harvelle's," Jo greets with her sunniest – and, in Dean's opinion, ridiculously fake – smile as she approaches him like he's an easily spooked horse. "You lookin' for a place to wait out the weather or an early dinner?"

The man glances at Dean behind the bar before turning his gaze back to Jo. "Dinner sounds good," he nods, dragging the knit hat off his head, sending his thin, dark hair into haphazard tufts, and wringing it in his hands nervously. "Could I get a cuppa coffee, too?"

"Sure thing," Jo says, still smiling, and Dean thinks her face must hurt from all that false cheer. "Have a seat and I'll grab you that coffee and a menu."

Dean fills an old ceramic mug with hours-old coffee and sets it on the counter in front of the stack of menus, lifting up the lid to the left-most cooler for the half-gallon jug of milk that's in there. Jo gathers the milk and coffee in one hand and the menu and a small bowl of real and artificial sugars in the other and carries the load over to the man.

"I'll give you a couple minutes to look over the menu," Jo tells him as she sets everything down on the table. When she turns back towards Dean, her smile falls from her face.

Dean just raises an eyebrow in question, subtly looking over Jo's shoulder at the man.

She presses close to the bar and leans on her elbows on the counter as she shrugs and shakes her head, blonde hair spilling over her shoulders. "Just got a weird... vibe."

The guy does seem a bit strange, still wearing his moth-eaten wool coat, stained leather work boots dripping melted snow into a puddle beneath his feet, hands still wringing his knit cap as he stares at the menu on the table in front of him. Of course, the feeling could simply be chalked up to the anxiety he's been carrying around all day. But Jo's picking up on it, too.

"It's probably nothing," she sighs with another shake of her head. "Like we've never had a weirdo pass through the Roadhouse before." She stands up straight, squares her shoulders, fixes her fake smile back in place, and returns to the man's table to take his order.

Feeling useless behind the counter now that he's poured a cup of stale coffee, Dean empties the last of the dregs from the carafe, rinses it out and refills it with water to start another pot. When he goes to replace the grounds, there's barely a tablespoon left in the bottom of the plastic Folgers container. Jo was the last one to make coffee, so he's not really all that surprised. "I'm gonna run out to the shed," he tells her as she rounds the end of the bar with her order pad in hand.

"Okay," she nods, hustling past him, into the kitchen.

The man at the table stares at Dean with dark eyes as Dean pulls on his jacket. A disconcerting shiver races down his spine when their gazes meet for the briefest of moments and Dean understands Jo's urge to put distance between herself and the unkempt stranger sitting slack-faced at the wobbly table near the Big Buck Hunter game. "Outta coffee," he tells Ellen and Jo as he passes them on his way to the back door.

It's so much easier to breathe outside, even if the chill does initially steal the air from his lungs. Dean recovers, slowly draws a breath and releases it as a cloud of mist that dissipates on the wind gust that sweeps across the field, swirling the wet flakes of snow as they lazy drift down from the low clouds. After a couple of moments, Dean moves over to the shed, pulling his key ring out of his pocket and opening the padlock with the smallest key.

There are only three canisters of Folgers left on the shelf and he makes a mental note to add it to the list next to the cash register so Ellen can pick more up when she makes her next trip into town. On the shelf below the coffee, wedged between boxes of real and artificial sugar packets, is a soft-pack of Marlboros, a worn book of matches slid beneath the cellophane. Dean's in no hurry to get back inside, so he taps a cigarette out of the pack and puts it to his lips. The matches are old and slightly damp and it takes three tries with three different matches before one finally strikes. The small burst of flame is just enough to catch the paper of the cigarette alight and Dean has to suck hard on the filter for it to burn properly.

He takes a long drag, fills his lungs with smoke, and watches the snow fall from the shelter of the supply shed. It's peaceful and quiet enough that he almost forgets what's waiting for him when he returns with the coffee, but the solitude is encroached upon by some foreign feeling Dean can't even begin to recognize. It's like static electricity and fear, skin buzzing while the bottom drops out of his stomach. He sets the coffee container back on the shelf and slowly moves towards the doorway, leaning beyond the threshold to look for whatever could possibly be causing the feeling.

No more than twenty feet away, writhing and undulating above the roof of the Roadhouse, is a small, black... cloud. Dean gets that weird sensation, that rising of the fine hairs at his nape, like he's being watched. The cloud shifts and moves with a speed much too swift and against the wind to be natural, dropping low and darting towards Dean. His vision goes dark and he feels like he's suffocating on something vile, something noxious.

Then, nothing.

Dean wakes with a start, sucking in a deep, damp breath that makes him choke and cough. The way his body hunches over pulls at his arms and he realizes, with more than a little panic, that his hands are bound behind him, rough fiber of the rope around his wrists itchy and cutting into his skin, cutting off his circulation the more he pulls against it. He forces himself to relax, takes slow, shallow breaths and tries to think. It's dark and he doesn't know where he his or who did this to him. Last he remembers, he was going out to the shed for coffee.

"Oh, _there_ he is," comes a gravelly voice out of the darkness.

"He-hello?" Dean asks, uncertain, straining to see something, anything.

"What's he planning, Deano? Huh? Poking his nose into places it shouldn't be." A man steps forward from Dean's left, eyes blazing a bright, sickly yellow as he leans down so his face is level with Dean's. "If Sammy's not careful, he's gonna lose it." He grabs Dean's nose between the second knuckles of his index and middle fingers, pulling his hand away to reveal the tip of his thumb wriggling between the digits. "Got your nose," he grins.

Dean jerks as far away from the man – no, _not_ man – as the chair and his restraints will let him, but it's not far enough at all.

"Come on," Yellow-Eyes wheedles, "tell me what Sammy's planning. Seems to think he can kill me, but we all know that's impossible."

"I don't-" Dean starts, takes a breath and licks his lips, and tries again. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Aw, is little brother keeping secrets from you?"

_Brother_, Dean thinks. _Sammy._ There's _something_ there, at the back of his mind, just out of reach. Bright hazel eyes and a frown. A promise and a kiss goodbye.

Yellow-Eyes tilts his head, fixing Dean with a curious stare. "You know," he says, eyes flaring brighter, "I don't have to do this the nice way. I could do this the easy, fun way. And you're probably not gonna like it one bit."

Dean's confused and edging on scared. He has no idea what the man - _thing_ - before him wants.

"Oh, Dean, Dean, Dean. What_ever_ will I do with you?" It's eerie, the way Yellow-Eyes smiles at Dean then. "I'm sure we'll think of something." His head tilts back and something even darker than the room around them streams from his gaping mouth.

The memory comes back so suddenly his heart stutters with the force of it. Dean in the shed, that unsettling feeling of being watched, the black cloud. And all he can think as the darkness swirls above him and the man's body collapses to the floor with a hollow thud is, _Oh, God, not again._


	6. Part Five

**PART FIVE - SAM**

Sam's somewhere in southern Minnesota, three hours out from Sioux Falls when he gets the call. The trill of his cell phone is just loud enough to be heard over the heaters running full-blast and Sam digs it out of his coat pocket without taking his eyes off the road. Snow is blowing and drifting and swirling all around him, obscuring the recently plowed blacktop of I-90, making it difficult to see and forcing him to slow down. He hazards a glance at the display before answering. It's Bobby. "Hey," he greets, feeling anxious and high-strung. "What's going on?"

Bobby hesitates long enough that Sam knows he's not calling to bear good news and he can only fear the worst. "It's Dean. He's missing."

"Demons?"

"Looks like. Ellen said he'd gone out to the supply shed for coffee and Jo went to check on him when he didn't come back after a few minutes. Shed doors were wide open, no Dean. No sign of a struggle or anything to make it look like he went unwillingly."

"So, you're saying he walked away with some demon because he _wanted_ to?"

"No, Sam, of course not. There's more. They'd had a customer – Jo said she got a weird feeling about him, that she thought Dean might've felt it too. Guy was unconscious when Jo went to serve him, had no idea where he was or how he'd gotten there when he came to."

"You think he was possessed?" Sam's mind can string the pieces together: possessed man shows up at the Roadhouse, demon riding him jumps ship when he's got the chance and Dean's alone, hijacks Dean and takes him God knows where for God knows what. Could be the same demon Sam met in Wisconsin, could be Azazel's way of luring Sam out.

"Yeah, Sam, I do."

Sam presses a little harder on the gas pedal, visibility be damned. "You found anything to summon this bastard yet?"

"I think I've got something. Ellen put Ash in charge at the Roadhouse and she and Jo are on their way out here as we speak. She's picking up a few things for me in Omaha. It'll be midnight at the earliest that they'll get here."

Shaking his head, Sam can't believe this is happening. Everything's so fucked up right now. "Just... do what you can, I guess."

"We'll get him back," Bobby says with conviction.

"Yeah," Sam exhales. "I'll... I'll see you in a few hours, Bobby."

"Okay." There's a heavy pause, like the older hunter wants to say more, maybe wants to reassure Sam. But he doesn't. "See you soon."

Sam tosses his phone aside and shoves a tape into the deck, twisting up the volume knob until the sounds of Metallica drown out the rush of hot air from the heater vents and the whir of the tires on the pavement. He doesn't doubt that he'll see Dean again – it's whether or not Dean will even be alive when he does, and if Dean _is,_ if he'll have any kind of memory at all. Who knows what Azazel will do to Dean if it means getting Sam to agree to being the leader of his demon army. The thing is, Sam doesn't know how far he's willing to go to keep Dean safe. His brother has already been through enough because of him, things he never should've had to go through – especially alone. Dean's always put Sam first and Sam can actually admit, now, that that's exactly what Stanford was about. Sure, Dean had tried to explain it to him four years ago, but he never wanted to believe it.

This could be Sam's turn to prove himself, that as much as Dean has sacrificed to protect him, he can do the same for his brother. Sam's thoughts circle around that idea the rest of the way to Sioux Falls.

The snow has stopped by the time Sam turns off I-90 onto I-29, racing south towards Bobby's. He blows past semis, foot falling heavier on the gas pedal the closer he gets, and the rear of the Impala fishtails wildly as he takes some of the curves too quickly. He knows he's going to beat Ellen and Jo, that whatever ritual or spell Bobby found can't be performed for _hours_ yet, but he just needs to get there.

The salvage yard is lit up bright enough Sam can see it from a mile or so out, clean white of the flood lights mounted on tall wooden poles around the various outbuildings and the rows of cars reflecting off the low clouds that hang heavy over the countryside. The Impala skids on the loose snow that's completely buried the county road Bobby lives on and Sam's forced to decrease his speed just a bit to avoid sending his brother's beloved car into a ditch. The snow is even deeper in some of the more open places, Bobby's drive included, and it bogs the car down further until he's creeping up alongside the house and stopping around back.

Out past the collection of cars in various states of repair, beyond the main garage, Sam can see a heavy-duty truck working to clear the snow from the yard. He makes his way over, slogging through shin-deep snow and drifts up past his knees, hanging back at the edge of the clearing with his hands shoved into his pockets. The truck makes a few more passes before it rumbles over, diesel engine chugging as it stops next to him. Bobby climbs out of the cab looking tired and ragged, shadows beneath his eyes and windburn across his cheeks. "Hey, Sam," he greets with a grim smile. "Ellen's still about an hour out. Making better time than I figured, now that the snow clearing up."

"Good. That's great. What do you need me to do?" There's a nervous energy buzzing under Sam's skin like heat lightning and he's itching to get started.

"I've got the ritual and the sigil. You should probably get acquainted with it as you'll be the one doing the summoning." Bobby leaves the truck running as he leads Sam back towards the house. The kitchen smells of burnt coffee when they enter. "Why don't you start a fresh pot and I'll go get what we're going to need."

Sam feels himself calm a little once his hands have something to do. It's best to stay busy until Ellen and Jo arrive because, if he doesn't, he might just go crazy from the waiting. A six hour drive across a good portion of the Midwest left him with nothing to think about except how Dean's missing, most likely abducted by a demon king that's got designs of recruiting Sam for his war. If Sam dwells on it too long, he can feel his panic rising and fears he won't be able to keep himself together long enough to get Dean back.

Bobby returns as Sam's pouring the water into the coffeemaker, the machine burbling as the reservoir fills. Sam's reassured by the many things that Bobby's set atop the table. A few sheets of paper; some kind of feathery-leafed, off-white plant; a large piece of chalk; six white pillar candles; a box of matches; a bowl; and a pocketknife. Bobby taps at the sheets of paper. "It's Latin, so it shouldn't be too difficult for you. A lot of the ritual is pretty particular so I've gotta finish with what I was doing outside. Give me a holler or track me down when the coffee's ready, would ya?"

"Sure thing," Sam tells him, picking up the outline of the ritual and giving the details a quick once-over. "If you need any help-"

"Yeah, yeah," Bobby grumbles before disappearing back outside.

Sam settles himself at the table, reads through the list of items necessary for the 'conjuration,' as the ritual calls it. All he can see that's missing is the Oil of Abramelin, some incense, and a few herbs. And sand. The sigil must be drawn in chalk, which will prove quite difficult in the frozen field out back, but Sam figures that's part of the particulars Bobby's working on.

The sigil is simple enough, two X's side-by-side, interior legs meeting to form a diamond between them, a line that bisects them horizontally, circles at either end of that line and at the ends of the exterior legs of the X's for a total of six. The candles go inside the circles, the bowl with the sand, various herbs, and oil should be placed in the bottom tip of the diamond, in front of which Sam will kneel. Once the candles are lit, Sam will begin the summoning with an incantation, which, as Bobby said, doesn't look too difficult. As he focuses on the sigil before him and the words he's speaking, he'll cut open his palm and bleed into the bowl. The last thing is more fire – a match into the bowl – which seems fitting for the demon that killed his mother.

Okay. He can do this, piece of cake. All he needs is for Ellen to get here. He glances at the wall clock – still a half hour before she arrives, according to Bobby's estimation.

The scent of the freshly brewing coffee hits him hard, makes him realize that he hasn't eaten all day, the coffee Bobby had handed him this morning the last thing he'd consumed. He rummages through the cabinets and the fridge until he finds a half loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter. He nixes the lunch meat he finds on a shelf in the fridge because it looks slightly questionable, even for roast beef. So he slaps together a couple of sandwiches, wolfing the first one down and taking his time with the second.

With the coffee pot nearly full, Sam heads back outside, finds Bobby at the nearer edge of the clearing situating a large sheet of oil-stained plywood on the ground. "Hey," Sam calls out as he gets closer. "Coffee's ready."

Bobby stands slowly, movements stuttering slightly as he draws up to his full height. "Not a word," Bobby says, eyes narrowed, heading off any 'old man' comment Sam can make before the words can even come out of his mouth.

The corner of Sam's mouth hitches in a half-smile, the first one all day, and he can't wait to have this night behind him, to have Dean back.

Once Ellen and Jo arrive, both looking as tired as Bobby and as anxious as Sam feels, things move quickly. They work together to mark out a large devil's trap across the frozen earth with temperamental cans of spray paint, then it's time to get down to business. Ellen and Jo retreat to the well-warded house while Bobby disappears somewhere into one of the outbuildings that line his property.

Sam draws the sigil carefully, places the candles and the bowl, adds herbs and oil to the sand before striking a match to light the candles. He clears his mind of everything but the image of the sigil before him and of his true intent. As he recites the words of the incantation, he lifts Dean's pocketknife he recovered back in New Orleans just a short time ago. With his thumb he flicks out the blade, draws it across his palm, squeezes his hand into a fist over the bowl, and watches his blood trickle, then run into the mixture. He lights another match and drops it into the small pool of blood that's gathered atop the sand and herbs.

The contents of the bowl spark and smoke, wind picking up around him as thunder rumbles overhead. Lightning webs across the sky with a crackle and the lights around the yard and in the house flicker.

Another crack of sound and light and the demon is standing before Sam in the middle of the devil's trap, Dean in his arms.

Azazel's grin is eerie, offset by his bright yellow eyes that flare in the dark. "How very curious," he comments to Sam as he holds Dean in close with an elbow around his throat. "Looks like big brother took all your scary dreams away and short-circuited on the power. I'm honestly surprised he's not a drooling, gibbering mess. But you Winchester boys are made of hearty stock. It's why I chose you, Sammy. Why I was _rooting_ for you. And your bleeding-heart brother had to go and screw it all up." He gives Dean a vicious shake. "Didn't you?" Trapped inside the pentacle from the Key of Solomon, he doesn't have anything but the physical strength of his vessel to use, but that's more than enough to hurt Dean. "I can give you your power back, Sam. It'll be so easy." He reaches his other hand up and splays it across the side of Dean's face. "Just one little _snap_ and we can put your brother out of his misery and make you the man you're supposed to be. What d'ya say, Sammy? Should we end Dean's suffering?"

"No!" Sam interrupts as Azazel adjusts his hand for a better grip. Dean's eyes are wide, shock verging on fear, and his chest is heaving with his short, shallow breaths. Sam can feel his panic like a tangible thing. "If you kill him, I _swear_ I'll end you."

Azazel throws his head back and laughs, an open, disturbingly joyful sound. "You and what army?" It's a joke, Sam knows. If Azazel gets what he wants, Sam will be nothing more than a half-breed pawn of hell to lead a legion of demons.

"I don't need an army. Just a very special gun."

"Oh ho," Azazel mocks, jaundiced eyes lighting up even brighter. "You got your hands on Samuel Colt's gun? I thought that was just a tale hunters passed down the generations like their very own mythical Holy Grail."

"It's not a myth. Let Dean go now or you'll find out firsthand just what it can do."

"Promises, promises," the demon grins.

It happens so fast. Sam's always thought life-changing moments slowed time down, but that's clearly not the case because between one heartbeat and the next-

Sam watches from just outside the circle, a safe distance from the demon that puts him too far away to do anything. Azazel's fingers grip the curve of Dean's jaw and pull – the _crack_ is loud as a gunshot and-

Both bodies are going down and Sam can't keep himself from running over to Dean's crumpled form, breaking the circle. But- "Oh, God," Sam breathes. Dean shifts, moving weakly as the demon's vessel is seizing on the ground, lit up with orange fire from the inside.

"You idjits okay?" Bobby asks, lowering the Colt as he steps out from the rusting side of the small shed Sam thinks houses a multitude of spare headlights and taillights and other, random, indicator lights.

Sam's still clutching at Dean when the older man approaches. "I think so. He's _alive_, breathing. But he's not waking up." Panic rises once more in Sam's chest, warring with his adrenalin from facing off against the demon, and it all makes him dizzy and weak-kneed.

"Boy's a Winchester. He'll be just fine," Bobby says, not nearly as convincing as Sam wishes he were. "That was an astoundingly stupid plan," Bobby tells Sam, handing the Colt over and stooping down to get a hand beneath Dean's shoulder. "Barely even half-assed and you had no idea if the gun would even work on a demon strong as Azazel."

Sam is thankful for the normalcy of the admonishing, tries to let it calm him as he stashes the Colt in the back of his jeans and leans down to help Bobby hoist Dean upright. "I didn't have anything else left to lose."

"Yeah, well, you boys are damn lucky," Bobby grumbles as they turn and make their way over to the house.

Ellen and Jo are standing inside the kitchen door as they approach, moving out of the way so they can get Dean inside. "You're all alive so it must've gone okay," Ellen says with a weak smile, gaze soft and worried on Dean's face.

"Better than I expected," Sam admits.

"The demon?"

"Dead."

"So the gun worked?" Jo asks as she and her mother trail them through the house and pause at the foot of the stairs.

"Surprisingly well," Bobby says, relinquishing Dean's weight to Sam because there's not enough room for three to pass and it's clear Bobby's too tired to carry him much further.

"I'm gonna put him to bed," Sam says, feeling kind of foolish through his slight hysteria for the way he's talking about his unconscious brother ,who's just been kidnapped by a demon that tried to _kill_ him, like he's a sleepy child. He lifts Dean over his shoulder in a fireman's carry and takes Dean upstairs, nudges open the door to the room he'd slept in just the day before, and gently settles Dean across the bed nearest the door. After working Dean out of his jacket and boots, Sam sits at the edge of the mattress for countless minutes, mentally urging Dean to wake up. But Dean remains motionless save for the shallow rise and fall of his chest as he breathes slow and even.

Bobby, Ellen, and Jo are sitting around the table in the kitchen with mugs of coffee and a bottle of whiskey when Sam gets downstairs. He lowers himself into the empty chair, releasing a deep, relieved breath, as he pulls the Colt out of the back of his waistband and sets it on the scarred surface of the table.

Ellen reaches for the revolver, fingers tracing over the metalwork on the barrel. "Maybe you should let Ash look at this, see if he can find out what makes it tick."

Sam wraps his hands around his warm mug of coffee and glances up at Ellen. "Sure. There's less than half a dozen bullets left – it'd be nice to have a weapon that can kill anything and an unlimited supply of ammunition."

"What're you expecting to take on?" Jo asks, nudging the bottle of whiskey across the table towards Sam.

Ellen's the one to answer that question as Sam uncaps the bottle and pours a healthy amount into his mug. "There'll be more demons where that one came from," she says, nodding her head towards the back door. "They won't stop coming."

Sam knows Ellen's right but, right now, all he really cares about is that Dean is upstairs, alive and safe.

**PART FIVE - DEAN**

He slowly wakes, afraid to open his eyes and make the throbbing deep in his head between his ears even worse. So he lays in the bed, curled up on himself, and breathes in counted measures until the edge of pain softens to something that doesn't make him feel as though his head is going to explode. He takes a chance, cracks an eye open. The room he's in is dim, sunlight bleeding around the edges of the curtains over the window providing enough illumination to make out the other bed between himself and the windows, the low dresser in the corner next to a desk. It doesn't feel unfamiliar but, even so, he doesn't really recognize anything, either.

As he stretches out on his back, feeling his vertebrae pop, his stomach rumbles and he realizes that he's starving. He can't remember the last time he ate.

He can't remember _anything_, for that matter.

There's nothing in the room in the way of pictures, nothing that makes him believe he lives here. As he glances about, he notices that he's still mostly dressed, save for shoes. He can feel something in the back pocket of his jeans, but it doesn't feel like a wallet. It's a small notepad. The first sheet begins, _Ellen gave me this notepad to keep track of all my duties here at the Roadhouse._

He tries to think, _Ellen, Roadhouse,_ but nothing comes to mind.

His stomach gurgles discontentedly again and he takes a deep breath, throws his legs over the side of the bed and stands slowly. His head swims slightly as he rises but it's not enough to make him feel like he's going to fall down or throw up, so he starts for the door. It's not closed tight, hinges squeaking slightly as it swings open, and he can hear muted voices coming from somewhere else in the house. The floorboards creak as he enters the hallway. There's a staircase at the far end and, as he moves towards it, the voices get louder.

The stairs protest even louder than the floorboards in the hall and the conversation below stops, followed by heavy footsteps, then a tall man with long, unkempt hair and the beginnings of a beard is standing at the foot of the stairs, eyes wide as he looks up. "Dean?" he asks, taking an aborted step closer, hand lifting towards the railing and falling back to his side.

_Dean,_ he thinks, rolling the name around in his head, feeling its familiarity, its rightness. He nods.

The man at the bottom of the stairs takes a breath, small smile forming on his face. "You hungry, man?"

Dean nods again.

"Come on. Bobby went grocery shopping this morning so nothing in the fridge has started to grow fur yet." He moves away, back down the way he came from.

Dean follows, keeps a few feet of distance between them. "Who are you?" Dean asks as they enter the kitchen. There's an older man sitting at the table by the wall with a white and blue mug and a newspaper in front of him.

The younger man turns, shares a glance with the older man before he lets out a heavy sigh. "I'm Sam. That's Bobby. I'm your brother."

It doesn't feel like a lie so Dean accepts it. For now. "Where are we?"

"You're in my house," the older man – Bobby – says, "in South Dakota."

"How did I get here?"

"It's a... long story," Sam says. "Why don't you eat first, then I can tell you all about it."

They don't seem at all put out or concerned by his questions and Dean doesn't really feel like he's in a position to argue, so he just nods and stands in the kitchen doorway as Sam moves around the room, putting food together. "You can sit down, boy," Bobby says over the rim of his mug before taking a long drink.

Dean takes a seat in the chair across from Bobby as Sam sets a plate with a sandwich and a handful of potato chips in front of him. "You want a beer?" he asks.

The clock on the wall says it's just after four and Dean guesses that's in the afternoon, so he nods. Sam returns to the table with two bottles and a plate of his own. He twists off the caps and hands a bottle over to Dean. "Thanks," Dean says, accepting the beer and taking a sip. He starts on his sandwich, feels Sam and Bobby's stares as he works his way through his meal.

A phone rings and draws the attention away from Dean. Bobby digs a cell phone out of the chest pocket of his flannel shirt. "Ellen," he tells Sam, pushing back in his chair and leaving the room.

"Ellen," Dean repeats, wondering if it's the same Ellen in the notepad in his pocket.

"Do you remember Ellen?" Sam asks, setting the second half of his sandwich back onto his plate.

"Uh, no. Her name was in here." Dean shifts enough to retrieve the notepad from his jeans and sets it on the table.

Sam picks it up, thumbs through it, stopping to read whatever catches his eye. "I've got something that'll be more helpful than this," he says.

Dean doesn't know what Sam means by that, doesn't get the chance to ask before Bobby's coming back into the kitchen. "They just turned off of 29," Bobby informs them, then he's disappearing out the back door.

'They' turns out to be two women, one older, one younger, in a truck hauling a decades-old silver trailer. The women climb down from the cab, eying Dean in a way that makes him feel like a zoo animal. "How're you feeling?" the older woman asks with a low, raspy voice and concern in her eyes.

"Fine," Dean tells her, glancing up at Sam for a little assistance.

Sam seems to get what he's silently asking for because he jumps in, "This is Ellen and her daughter Jo. You stayed with them for a while. Worked at the Roadhouse. That's what your notepad was for."

Dean nods. "What's that?" He gestures towards the trailer.

"It's yours," Ellen tells him. "It's where you lived while you stayed with us. It might help with the... memory thing."

"I'll go park it around back," Bobby says. "You all go ahead and go inside."

Sam settles a hand on Dean's shoulder, guides him back towards the door, and Dean allows it. The weight and heat of Sam's hand is comforting and he finds himself missing the touch when Sam moves away once they're back inside. "I've got something for you, too," Sam says, crossing the kitchen and starting down the hall.

Dean follows, pauses in the doorway of a large room bearing a desk, a couch, a couple of chairs, and more books than he'd care to count. Sam is over by the couch in front of the large window, shoving notebooks into a ratty backpack. Dean enters the room but hangs back. "What's that?"

"They're yours. Journals. You've been keeping them for years. Maybe they can help you remember." Sam hands over the bag, expression hopeful.

"Thanks." He offers Sam the most confident smile he can muster and heads back to the kitchen.

Dean spends the rest of the afternoon and well into the night in the tiny bedroom at the back of the trailer going through the stack of notebooks that hold the events of his life from the past decade or so, some things striking familiar, but nothing more so than the account of a recurring dream he's had more than a dozen times since the previous spring. He'd taken a break from the daily journals when he came across the smaller collection of notebooks marked 'dream journal,' followed by a number, in a duffel bag he found in the closet.

Just reading the words sends shivers across his skin and, if he closes his eyes, he can almost see it in his head. It's a sketch across from him on the wall that really sets his growing arousal off. The eyes of the portrait are the most familiar thing he's seen yet, more familiar than his name, even. He shuffles towards the foot of the bed and recognizes the drawing: it's Sam. His _brother_ Sam.

Nothing he's read has really mentioned Sam, a few entries throughout the first few journals that detail hunts for supernatural beasts that would read more like fiction if it weren't for the way some part of his subconscious tells him it's all real, and the downtime between jobs spent with his brother up until Sam left for college. Well, up until Dean more or less _sent_ Sam off to college. It seems like Sam was against it, but Dean didn't want Sam to end up like him, wanted Sam to have a real life and some kind of chance at normal that Dean, himself, would never have. Their job is dangerous and Dean's afraid that something could happen to Sam and Dean wouldn't be able to live with himself if his brother got seriously hurt or worse. He's let Sam down enough growing up and this is the only way he knows how to keep him safe. He will always do whatever it takes.

But what he feels reading and rereading the entry about the dream... It's not the love one brother should have for another. It's something _else._ All-consuming and intense, it's like desire and lust and pain and love all combined into something so strong it takes Dean's breath away when he replaces the blank face of the man in the dream with Sam's.

He wonders if Sam still feels the same way after all these years, or if he thinks it was a mistake. Dean's chest aches at the thought, makes him feel empty and hollow for reasons he can't really explain.

He has to set aside the dream journal and reaches for the other notebook that was on his nightstand. It's his most recent daily journal. It starts with an incoherent entry from April, around the time he first had the dream. Dean flips through the pages, eyes scanning entries about days spent driving; random, easy hunts; arriving at Bobby's and trying to figure out what's wrong with him; getting sent to Ellen's, and, later, Sam's arrival. The initial mention of Sam is brief as though Dean hadn't wanted to write about him, but it's a pretty important thing to leave out.

The second mention of Sam, though, the day after, sheds a bit more light on their unique relationship. Sam was leaving, but he promised he'd be back soon. Then he'd kissed Dean goodbye.

Dean's not sure what day it is now, but it doesn't _feel_ like it was that long ago.

He's still sitting in bed, propped up against his headboard, staring at the sketch of Sam on the wall, when there's a knock on the trailer door. The alarm clock on his bed is no help telling him what time it is, LED numbers flashing 6:32. And the watch on his wrist is just as helpful, battery having died at some point, hands pointing to 4:56. It's dark outside, but it's winter and it has been for the past however many hours since Dean locked himself away in here.

Dean climbs off the mattress and moves down the hall to the front door. Sam's standing outside when he pulls it open. "Hey."

Sam turns, wide smile on his face despite his shadowed, heavy-lidded eyes. "Hi. Brought you coffee. Figured since Bobby didn't hook up the water... you might need some."

Dean steps aside to let Sam enter. "Yeah. Thanks." He takes the thermos Sam holds out to him, moves into the kitchenette for a mug. "Do you want some?"

"No, thanks." He stands in the middle of the living room with his hands in the pockets of his jeans, watching Dean pour himself some coffee. "How's it going?"

The corner of Dean's mouth lifts in a smirk. "It's going pretty good."

"Yeah? Anything coming back?"

Dean shrugs, starts back down the hall towards his room. "Some things, I think."

"That's good."

It's almost too much, the two of them in Dean's tiny bedroom together. "I'm sorry, you know," Dean says, dropping to sit on the edge of the mattress.

"For what?" Sam asks, confused, leaning against the short span of wall between the doorway and the closet.

"For making you leave. I feel like... From what I've read, anyway, it seems like none of his would've happened if I'd let you stay."

"It's not your fault, Dean," Sam says quietly, moving into the room. "And it doesn't matter now." He picks up the bag of notebooks and moves it to the floor so he can sit beside Dean, then reaches into his pocket. The necklace he pulls out is unlike anything that Dean's ever seen and, at the same time, he knows it belongs to him. "Here." Sam slips the leather cord over Dean's head, lets the weight of the bronze pendant settle it around his neck.

Dean lifts the pendant, studies the horned mask, wondering if it's for protection or if it has any real purpose.

"I gave that to you years ago when we were kids," Sam tells him. "You used it to perform a spell a couple years later. It's why you started losing your memory."

"The nightmares?" Dean asks. He'd read all about those. How Sam had had them, then Dean did something to make them go away, take them for himself. He never wrote down what it was, specifically, that he did, just that it was to protect Sam.

"Yeah. Turns out they weren't just nightmares, though. Yesterday, while you were out, I got curious, started looking things up online. What we thought were just nightmares were actually premonitions. Everything we dreamed _happened._"

It takes a couple minutes for that to sink in. "You mean, all those people that died... We could've saved them?"

Sam shrugs and shakes his head, overgrown bangs falling across his face. "I don't know. Maybe. But it's not like we knew what was happening. Dad-" Sam's breath hitches before he continues, "Dad never told us. I mean, he didn't know, either, until later, but he still could've said something."

His brother sounds sad and angry, maybe disappointed. "Sam?"

"That's the other thing I need to tell you." He sits up straighter, squares his shoulders as he turns to face Dean. "Before I found you, Dad and I were on a hunt up in Colorado. I made a mistake and he... he died."

The memory hits Dean with all the force of a tidal wave, drowning him with fear and cold, the smell of woods and snow. "I- I _saw_ that," he says, reaching for the journal that sits open by his pillow, flipping back a few pages to the entry about the wendigo – the vision he'd had in the middle of the day while working at the Roadhouse. "I saw the whole thing." He hands the notebook over to Sam, watches him read it. "It wasn't your fault, Sam. It was an accident."

"I shouldn't have left him behind."

"You couldn't have known."

"But I _should've._" Sam scoffs, nose wrinkling in self-disgust, and tosses the notebook behind him onto the mattress.

"It wasn't your fault," Dean stresses again. From what he's read, he's well acquainted with the feeling that he's let everybody down. And he's certain there's not much Sam could've done to stop their father's death. He gently sets his hand on Sam's knee, resolved to change the subject and draw his brother's mind away from the things they can't change. "Hey."

Sam glances up at him before his tired gaze returns to Dean's hand on his leg. "Yeah?"

"Why'd you kiss me?"

Sam's eyes snap back to Dean's face in an instant, search for something and softening when they find it. "Because I love you," Sam shrugs, like the answer is the most obvious thing in the world.

Who knows? Maybe it is.

Dean lifts his hand to Sam's face, unsteady fingers tracing over the stubble on his cheek before sliding back into his hair, curling around the back of his skull to pull him in for a kiss. He's determined to imprint the taste and the feel of Sam on his brain so he can never forget it again. "I remember you," he whispers against Sam's lips as they shift back onto the mattress, notebooks kicked to the floor. "I remember this."

"You _always_ remembered me," he says, gaze momentarily drifting from Dean's face to the sketch of him on the wall, "you just didn't know it."

"Always been there," Dean agrees, threading his fingers through Sam's hair again to pull him down into another kiss.

"Are you sure, Dean? You sure you want to do this?" Sam stills above him, hovers inches away, the look on his face open honesty overlaying his weariness. He'll stop if Dean asks him to.

But Dean will do no such thing. "Yes," he says, without a second thought. Through everything, that dream of Sam was the only thing that ever stayed with him. He flips them over, pushes Sam down against the mattress, shoves at Sam's jacket and tosses it to the floor before reaching for the hem of Sam's shirt.

"Please," Sam begs, lifting his hips, letting Dean undo the fly and pull his jeans down his hips and over his thighs. The denim bunches at his boots and it's a struggle to get him out of tangle of worn fabric and leather. "Dean."

Dean doesn't remember stripping out of his clothes, doesn't know if Sam helped or if he did it on his own. He kneels between Sam's thighs and leans down to kiss him.

Sam lets it go on for a couple long moments before he's flipping them over again and shoving Dean's legs open. "God," he groans, trailing biting kisses down the side of Dean's throat and over his chest, pausing at one nipple to tease it into a hard, red peak before moving over to the other and continuing his journey south, pressing soft, open-mouthed kisses to the insides of Dean's thighs. Then, without any warning, he's swallowing down Dean's achingly-hard length.

"Jesus _Christ,_" Dean curses, throwing his head back onto his pillow and trying his damnedest to not thrust up into Sam's mouth.

Sam sucks at Dean's cock until he's hard and leaking, slides up his body to take his mouth in a rough kiss. His own dick is a hard, hot line against Dean's when he slots their hips together and starts moving. "I love you," he whispers against Dean's mouth and Dean knows – he _knows_ - believes it deep inside his marrow.

"Wait, wait," Dean pleads, hands gripping Sam's hips to stop him because he doesn't want to come like this. "Want you inside me."

Above him, Sam's whole body shudders as he lets out a harsh breath against Dean's neck. "Do you- do you have something? Lube?"

"I don't- don't know." He shifts beneath Sam and reaches for the drawer in the nightstand, but he comes up empty.

"Come on," Sam groans. "It's _you._ You've gotta have lube somewhere."

"I've got a couple of bags in the closet," Dean suggests.

Sam's off the bed and kneeling on the floor, digging through Dean's duffels in a second. He rocks back onto his heels, head falling back as he raises a fist. "Success," he says, climbing back to his feet and dropping back onto the mattress between Dean's spread legs. "It's pretty old, but it's barely used."

"Don't care," Dean tells him, splaying his thighs wider, dragging his palm up the underside of his dick. "Come on, Sammy."

When their eyes meet again, Sam's staring at him with such an intensity Dean shivers with it. "Yeah, Dean. I got you." He flicks open the cap and slicks up his fingers, circles the tips around Dean's hole, presses one in up to the first knuckle.

"_Please,_" Dean begs, arching his back and trying to get Sam deeper.

"Gotta go slow. Don't wanna hurt you," Sam whispers against his throat, lips tickling.

"Hurry, hurry." He's impatient, can't wait, needs Sam now.

Two fingers don't become three fast enough, but Sam pacifies him with slow, passionate kisses. Then he's pulling away from Dean completely, reaching for the lube again and drizzling more into his palm. He strokes himself once, twice, leans back over Dean, braced on one arm while he guides himself between Dean's thighs with his other hand.

"I love you," Dean says abruptly, chest close to bursting with everything he's feeling in this moment, and he knows without a doubt it's the first time he's ever said the words to Sam. He doesn't want them blurted out, randomly, in the middle of sex, needs Sam to know that he _means_ them.

The blunt head of Sam's cock presses against sensitive, furled skin, presses deeper and sinks in, tight ring of muscle clamped down around him as Dean tries to relax, tries to let him in. Sam's mouth falls open, plush bottom lip catching against the tip of Dean's chin. "I know," he pants, breathless. "I know."

Dean can feel every inch of Sam as his brother pushes into him, each ridge of pulsing vein under taut skin, the heat of the rigid muscle. He lifts his legs, wraps them around Sam's hips and holds him there for a long moment once Sam's buried inside him. "Just wanna feel you," he says.

Sam nods, kisses him wet and lazy, eyes half-open.

"Okay."

Sam takes his time at first, slow pull out, gentle push back in. He takes his time, makes each thrust count, driving their desire to dizzying until it's too much to bear. The movement of Sam's hips goes erratic as his pace increases, each meeting of their bodies forcing harsh gasps out of Dean and grunts out of Sam. "Oh, fuck," Sam breathes. "So close."

"Sam, Sam," Dean chants, curling his hand around himself as the head of Sam's cock relentlessly hits his prostate. "Oh. _Oh._" He shoots thick and sticky over his hand and stomach, a particularly strong pulse hitting Sam's stomach and that, combined with the fluttering of Dean's muscles around his cock, is enough to set Sam off, too.

Sam comes nearly as abruptly as Dean, cock pulsing deep inside of his brother as he hunches over, forehead on the pillow beside Dean, cheeks touching. He gingerly pulls out a moment later, collapsing onto his side, facing Dean, bodies touching, sweat-damp skin glistening in the lamplight. His eyes are closed and his breathing is slowly evening out.

Dean doesn't want to forget this. He reaches for the sketchbook on his nightstand and pushes Sam's sweaty hair away from his face. He fills one page, then another, with the soft lines of Sam's sleep-relaxed face before flipping to a third page and sketching a new portrait of Sam for his wall, one where Sam is smiling. Where he's happy. He sets the sketchbook aside and turns off the lamp, settles against Sam's chest, and wraps an arm around his waist. Holds onto Sam, holds onto this moment.

If he's completely honest, Dean's a little terrified of what waking up tomorrow will bring.

In the darkness he focuses on Sam's face in his mind. The same eyes that haunted him for months, wide smile bracketed by deep dimples, strong jaw, aristocratic nose. Sam's beautiful.

He thinks about getting up to lock the door and turn off the rest of the lights, but he doesn't want to move right now, if ever. Ellen and Bobby spent an hour putting up wards earlier, so they're safe from anything supernatural. It's not worth it to get up, he decides, pressing closer to Sam.

Sam stirs, blinks up at Dean, and smiles. "Hey," he whispers.

"Hey yourself," Dean says, moving impossibly closer, leaning in to kiss Sam softly on the lips.

Humming, he shifts one of his thick thighs between Dean's legs and lazily nips at Dean's bottom lip.

"Keep that up and I'll be ready to go again," Dean tells him, rocking gently against Sam's leg.

Sam just kisses him quiet and holds him tighter against his chest.

In the peaceful darkness, Dean prays to God he'll remember all of this in the morning.


	7. Epilogue

**EPILOGUE**

They stick around Bobby's for another week before Sam helps Dean gather the few belongings he's accumulated in the trailer and packs them away into the trunk. They'd said their goodbyes to Ellen and Jo a couple of days before, Ellen making them promise to stop by when they're in the area. Jo tried to convince Dean that if they ever had a job in Nebraska or anywhere within a good five-hundred-mile radius, to give her a call and she'd give them a hand. That was quickly followed by Ellen emphatically warning them against ever doing so if they'd like to keep breathing.

It was easy and not at all painful, and didn't really feel like saying goodbye. It was markedly more difficult to say the words to Bobby, given what the man had done to help them.

But Bobby keeps the mood light as they stow away the last of their things into the Impala's backseat. "Be careful, ya idjits," he chides good-naturedly, tugging Sam in for a quick hug before releasing him in favor of Dean. He claps Dean on the back twice before pulling away to hold him at arm's-length. "I'm proud of you boys."

Dean ducks his head, grinning even as his cheeks turn pink. "Thanks, Bobby."

"You take care of your brother," Bobby tells Sam.

"I will. I promise."

"Oh, jeez," Dean sighs with false exasperation. "Why don't you just start braiding each other's hair already?"

Sam and Bobby share a laugh at that as Dean climbs into the passenger seat.

"We'll see you," Sam says, reaching his hand out for Bobby to shake. "Thanks again for everything you've done for us."

"You're welcome, Sam."

Once they're both inside the car, Dean relaxes back against the seat, small line of confusion creasing his brow. "What?" Sam asks, starting down Bobby's lane and turning onto the county road that'll lead them to the highway.

"Nothing. Just..." Dean leans forward then, braced against his seat belt, and reaches underneath his seat for the dusty box of cassette tapes.

Sam feels something like hope flare in his chest when Dean runs a finger along the titles before selecting Led Zeppelin and popping it into the deck, drumming his fingers on the dash to "Ramble On" on the B-side of _Zep II_ when it crackles through the speakers. Sprawling out in his seat, Dean turns to Sam with a grin on his face.

Dean might not remember everything just yet – and he might not ever – but this feels like something kind of big and Sam trusts that it's all going to be okay so long as they're together.


End file.
